


Testing Maintenance

by DreamOfSerenity



Category: Portal (Video Game)
Genre: Gen, Portal Stories: Mel
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-06-15
Updated: 2017-03-17
Packaged: 2018-07-15 08:17:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 22
Words: 100,087
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7214752
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DreamOfSerenity/pseuds/DreamOfSerenity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mel finds herself trapped in Aperture once again, but this time while GLaDOS is back online and in charge. With the help of Virgil, the Maintenance Core, she must devise a way of escape before its too late, and the only way to go up...is to go down.  { A sequel to the fan-mod, Portal Stories: Mel }</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Things in Aperture had turned absolutely sideways. There was so much to do. More than ever, the robots that inhabited the facility were busy, and after such a long, undisturbed rest. GLaDOS' defeat at the hands of the tenacious human all those years ago had been both liberation and discord, leaving the testing chambers and all other obstacles, stair ways, and factories in a state of decay. Some things stopped working completely, others went about their days trying to fulfill the purpose they were made for as best they could. In some cases, a robot might find themselves active but immobile, and there for unable to complete their usual tasks. Stranded on a heaping pile of garbage, with no way of retrieval and a shattered, glitchy optic lens that made it a little difficult to see out of.

Virgil's shell shuttered at the thought, the round ball of metal hanging tightly to his management rail and picking through some spare parts back in the repair wing. His old repair wing, rather. It was a little under used, but since GLaDOS had come back into power it was getting a shiny new upgrade. Some of the old tools and parts that had been in there were no longer usable and had rusted away, but he could get more. That wasn't anyone's fault. What really made him mad was some of the things he had recently collected had been broken when GLaDOS was knocked off her throne by some rogue core. That was the real kicker. Now the entire facility had been broke, split at the rims, and thrown about in some mad, power hungry fray.

The Maintenance Core was very good at his job, but not well enough off to repair some of the major damages that had been done, so he was currently leaving that to the big lady. At the very moment, he had actually been working on something for himself!

“Lets see here...no, that's model 63-F. I knew this was going to be hard but I should have found one by now.” He went picking through the parts that he'd found in some of the lower levels of aperture where a lot of it was out of GLaDOS' reach and could not truly be repaired. Those districts of the labs were left to rot even before the long sleep. Virgil was the only robot that ever went down there, and for this purpose alone. To find things. Anything useful.

“AHA!” The core cried out triumphantly and flexed his top handle bar enthusiastically, feeling pretty pleased with himself. “Model 22-A! In almost perfect condition too!” He'd gotten into the habit of speaking with himself on the job. Unless he was fixing another core, there wasn't anyone else around to strike up a conversation with. He wasn't one to be social with the other cores, though. A lot of them mostly gave him the simulated, artificial sensation of a human migraine.

“Now for the tricky part.”

A claw came down, lifting the part he had found to optic level. He could control certain robotics round him as he pleased. He had permission, at least. It certainly made the job easier since he wasn't as lucky as some droids and given hands and feet. His cracked optic clicked, using another claw to remove it from his hull and replacing it with the new one he had found. It whirred, spinning back into place and Virgil blinking a few times to test it out.

“Ah, much better! That was a lucky find. I'm going to need to be extra careful from here on out. No more dumpster diving for me, so to speak. Aheheh--!” The little rusty red core made a half-enthused attempt to chuckle at his own joke, but not truly finding a whole lot of humor at the expense of the time he spent down in the junkyard offices. Thankfully, like the optic lens, he was very lucky when it came to finding things.

Yes, and what a lucky find she was. Virgil had searched that district of the facility until he felt like his floral painted shell would peel, when he found a very rare, unique sound for a laboratory full of machines. A heartbeat. The poor, female human would have been the first test subject to endure the cryo-sleep inflicted on her, saving her from certain death when everything in Aperture went to hell. In a backwards sort of way, it was probably the best case scenario around here for a human. Virgil found himself wondering what had become of Mel after she left. Goodness knows he didn't have a single clue as to what was past Aperture, only that the fields surrounding it were full of wheat for miles around and that there was a small town made for the scientists, back in the day, that was no longer used. What Virgil had found interesting about Mel's file, aside from being an Olympian, was that she had blatantly been lied to by the scientists. Her original call was for her to stay a couple of hours in the cryo-chamber, when the real purpose was to keep her around for a couple of decades to see if she would age in that time.

Test was proven successful. Maybe, now that there were two test subjects running free, they could find each other. That would be best if there are no more humans out there, right? It seemed to be a good thing. To have someone.

_Beep. Beep. Beep._

“Gah!” Virgil only noticed that he had slipped deeply into the back of his memory processor when he was disturbed by a yellow light up on the east wall of the repair wing. It trilled a consistent bleeping noise, the core narrowing his optic eye at it in suspicion. That light, for as long as he had worked here, had never gone off before, let along made a noise of any kind. Because of its neglect, it was taking Virgil a few moments to even remember what it was for. He knew it was something extremely important, and maybe even a little frightening. This made him nervous, and he looked around to see if there was anything wrong. Smoke? Sparks? Was there a gas leak? That wouldn't even effect him. Was toxic goo rising again? No, he took care of that, and GLaDOS would have made sure it stayed that way.

“Wait...GLaDOS...?” Something snapped back into place, and Virgil looked back up at the light with his eye dilated to a small dot as he remembered what the light was for. He was being called up to the core chamber of Aperture were the giant resided. Where SHE resided.

GLaDOS wanted to see him.

“O-oh...okay! Y-yeah this is...this is fine. She wants to check on my progress!” Virgil could feel a small panic rising. She'd never been interested in his progress before, and she didn't need to call him up to see what it was he had been doing. Whatever it was she wanted, it was to be said face to face. His 'progress' had nothing to do with it. Had she found out about Mel? Was this punishment for letting her go?! “Oh no...”

Thinking logically, he considered himself thoroughly screwed.

 

\---------

 

GLaDOS was massive. Not just in her physical core form, but her reach through the facility was further than any other manager. She had roots in every computer, every wall and manufactured artificial intelligence. She may have had her blind spots, but there were ways of fleshing out anything competent enough to find them. For the most part, her job was fairly easy. Whatever she said was done, and up until recently, the other AIs in the facility obeyed her every word out of either ignorance or fear. Sometimes both. One would have to be pretty stupid to defy her.

That was exactly what went wrong.

Her chamber was airtight. Nothing got in without her permission. Today, she had left a small panel open where a management rail could disturb the symmetry of her quarters, looking ugly and out of place, but it would do for now. The giant hung patiently, occupying her time with fixing an error in the turret line that kept falling out of sync after so much damage had been done to it when HE took over. Sometimes it still produced the monstrosity that was the cubed turrets, abominations that she very quickly disposed of whenever one came into existence. Seeing them used to put her into an automatic foul temper, but today she had found herself in a good mood and wasn't willing to let anything spoil it.

GLaDOS came back into her own mind, leaving her vision at the turret line to retreat back into her chamber as the core she had summoned approached on the management rail she'd set up for his arrival. She could sense fear in him. Good. That meant he would be compliant. The ones that didn't fear her were all mad, and too far gone to cooperate.

Virgil, on the other hand, only had to take one look at GLaDOS and all her mass to start shaking again. She was eerily silent, the yellow optic of her's boring a hole into his own and making him think that if she stared long enough he would catch on fire. His plan was to not speak unless spoken to, but the silence was too much for him to bear and was thrown away in a desperate need to distract himself from his own thoughts.

“V-Virgil the Maintenance Core. You called...ma'am?” He was quick to add the last bit, just to be on the safe side, but he must have sounded pathetic. He knew he did but he couldn't help himself.

There was another few moments of thick silence, which Virgil almost preferred once GLaDOS did speak up. Her voice filled the room, Virgil's hull vibrating with the mere depth of it all. She was everywhere and everything.

 _ **“I know who you are.”** _ Her tone was that of rolling thunder, low and deep but could shake an entire building. Her monotone was patient, with no rush to her words. She could spend all day with Virgil there under her thumb and not say a single word, and he would still be there. GLaDOS spoke in the voice of a god that had all the time in the world to spare and did not care for its meaning.

 _ **“You were my first core. The scientists built you in an attempt to monitor my behavior. That didn't last long.”**_ There was something absolutely predatorial about the way she implied that very last part, and it made Virgil recoil back involuntarily. Even through his fear, what she had said stunned and confused him enough to address it.

“I'm afraid I don't recall--”

 _ **“You wouldn't.”**_ GLaDOS turned away from Virgil, a screen appearing before her flashes of images too fast for Virgil to process exactly what they were. Was he even meant to be looking at it or should he mind his own business. Still, he snapped back to attention when she spoke once more. “Most cores start off with a mild level of sentience that grows with age. It was a flaw the scientists did not anticipate. The less sentient, the more they behave...However, aware cores make for good substitutes for what would otherwise be a paid employee.”

Virgil was too spooked to try and figure out why he was feeling an underlining layer of insult at her explanation. He did manage to pull back when the screen GLaDOS had been inspecting moved to flash in front of him instead, only this time with a single video playing from one of the security cameras from the chamber that once hosted a functioning AEGIS. Virgil knew the footage all too well, and his optic dilated at the sight of Mel shutting AEGIS down after her struggle to keep him at bay. His suspicions had been correct. This was about Mel.

_**“Is this your doing?”** _

It had never occurred to Virgil that releasing Mel would stir up future consequences with GLaDOS. She had been off at the time he sought out Mel's help, and even after realizing she would be back online he had made himself too busy to consider it a possibility he would be found out. Did he regret helping Mel escape? Of course not. He owed her his life. It was either drown then or be crushed now. There was no lying to GLaDOS, however. She knew the answer, and he would have been an idiot to think otherwise. Best to own up to it and take what was coming to him.

“Yes. That was me.”

_**“Then I believe an expression of gratitude should be in order.”** _

There was a moment inside Virgil's shell where his gears may have stopped working, his central processor going blank for a moment. It didn't take him too long to put together what she had said, but that didn't mean that after it had he would believe it. He was an old core, after all. “Did...did you say...'gratitude?'”

 _ **“Yes.”**_ Another video on the screen was pulled up of Mel going through the dump offices and retrieving Virgil, an area that was only just in GLaDOS' line of vision before her cameras were cut off. Anything further down was too old to monitor, and for the most part pretty useless. The screen wouldn't stop at that video, however, an continued to show different angles of footage throughout the facility as Mel tested her way to the top. “Your resourcefulness is something to be admired. Waking a human to retrieve you and then using it to shut off the scientist's security management. I was powerless to stop the rise of toxic waste the facility was being flooded with in the time I was dead. You saved science.”

Oh.

Virgil just about fell apart. That was a good ol' kick to where a gut would have been necessary. He had not words to respond with. No genuine words, at least. “Ah! Yes, well...You're welcome...I suppose...S-so, you aren't mad about letting her out?”

“I, more than anyone, can understand when some things need to be let go. For the best. She was no longer useful...to you...” GLaDOS swayed, the screen lifting from view and disappearing into one of the many moving walls. _ **“I have been studying this security feed carefully. She seemed like quite the competent tester...though, more reliable then maybe some others. Less...resistant, I would say.”**_

The maintenance core was adrift on so many conflicted, confused emotions. One moment he was preparing himself for the worst, and the next he was not only being thanked for saving GLaDOS, of all robots, but being asked about Mel's performance as a test subject. Why did it matter? She was long gone. This whole ordeal had happened literally months ago.

“I...didn't really know her for too long to be honest. I assumed she did what I said because she wanted out. That's reason enough, right?”

 _ **“Hm. I only regret I couldn't have analyzed her myself. An Olympian. How...predictable. Age 35. Irish-German descent. Melanie...Redacted...Funny that they would have similar names.”** _ GLaDOS seemed to be growing less interested in Virgil as time passed, and this would be proven when she turned away from the core, a few panels responding to her and flattening themselves out. _ **“Thank you, maintenance core. You're excused.”**_

Virgil, even in all of his deliriousness, was snappy about turning head and sliding out of that room as fast as the rail could take him. It was a ways back to the repair wing from the central core room, and in that time he had room to shake out his nerves. Verbally.

“Oh god, what was THAT?! What just happened?! Is my optic twitching? I feel like my optic's twitching! I can't believe I was just...just congratulated on keeping HER from drowning!” He found the panel that let him into his work station, zipping in on his management rail and still in a fit over the unexpected meeting he had just been invited too. “And what was with her obsession with Mel? What does that all even mean anyway? Less resistant? She took down AEGIS! How much more resistant can you get? Fight the power! Home free! And that's just it. She's out! So what relevance does that have to anything?”

“Um...”

“YEE!” Virgil, in his tirade, hadn't noticed that there was a very beat down core with a white optic shining in his direction from the workbench. Seeing that it was one of his regulars, the maintenance core's handlebars lowered in relief from his previous alarm. “Oh, it's just you Glitchy.”

“If this is a bad time I can come back.” The core sitting on the workbench was rather pathetic looking, with a dour, broken spirit in his optic that not a lot of the cores seemed to posses. They were all, for the most part, very lively. It was for this reason, and knowing the other core well by now, that it was hard for Virgil to turn him away.

“Ah, it was but...You know what? Forget about it. What are you in for today?”

“My bottom handlebar came off again...and I think I have cyber pox...”


	2. Chapter 2

Bottled water. Cans of beans, fruit cocktail, and tomato soup. Gauze. Alcohol. Soap. Wine. Jam. Chocolate cake mix, which was overall useless without a working oven. The best that could be done is heat it up soup style with some water in a copper pot over a handmade fire. All these things were vital to her survival, and littered the abandoned barn Mel chose to hole herself up in. There had once been a farmhouse beside the barn, but it looked like it had burnt down ages ago. Even one wall of the barn had been torched before the fire had been put out, but the damage caused was minimal. Decay and termites were the real enemy and it left holes in the roof. Thankfully, there were none above the loft where Mel slept. Napping into the afternoon wasn’t an unusual routine. There wasn’t a whole lot else to do with her time other than gather supplies, and she made sure those trips were far between.

No one had come. She had been counting the days off on the walls of the barn outside, carefully, and it had been almost six months now. The barn was only meant to be a temporary stay until she had enough supplies and was well enough, after Aperture, to travel further in search for civilization. She had gathered enough food and water, but after walking for two days she realized it wouldn’t be enough, and either she risked venturing further and not finding anything, or she would head back to the barn and spare herself. For all she knew there was a city just over the horizon, but with how flat this land had been, those chances were very unlikely. Her next plan was to wait it out and see if anyone came around. An automobile perhaps, though there were no roads. Surely an airplane? But she had seen none and had cut down a giant ‘HELP’ in the fields of wheat just in case. Like something out of the pictures where aliens would leave circles in corn fields. She maintained the letters carefully, making sure they were always easy to spot from the sky.

The sky was silent. It was empty and vast, reaching for miles without so much as a mountain to disturb it. Mel had stirred herself enough to climb onto the roof of the barn where she lay a blanket out and stared up at the clouds with her arms rested behind her head. Had her situation been different, she would have considered this a peaceful existence. She had lived somewhere similar to this before Aperture. Grew up on farm life with an enormous plot of land to just run in. Run, run, run all day long. Running after chickens, after one of their ponies, after her brothers. Just always running and never seeming to want to grind to a halt. That cryo-chamber was quite the halt.

Mel took in a deep breath, only to be reminded that the air wasn’t what it used to be. It was thick and it smelled. She wasn’t sure if it just grew to be like that, or if it was Aperture’s doing. For all she knew, the laboratories were so vast she could still be sitting on top of the testing chambers miles below. A hand went to her throat as she exhaled, her voice muted from the experience and not letting onto so much as a sigh. Something about the cryosleep had completely ridden her of her voice and she could only produce a small croak if she really strained hard enough. She had assumed that it might have worn off by now, but she was was sorely disappointed when it did not turn out as such. Mel would have to accept that she was now mute, among other things. The silence, overall, was the most unbearable with not even herself as conversation. Birds did not visit the barn, or any wildlife for that matter. The most she had seen were various insects, and when she had first arrived she longed for companionship enough to hope for a barn cat to be living there. The space could only be filled with her thoughts. Miles upon miles of thoughts.

As well as an upset stomach. The hand that had once been to Mel’s throat went to her thinning stomach as it made a rude noise, breaking herself from her sky watch to head back down into the loft for some food. She had an order of things. Fruit cocktail for breakfast, beans for lunch, and tomato soup for dinner. Water was mandatory. Wine was optional. The jam was on reserve for when she was running low, and that seemed to be the case this afternoon. There was a single can of beans left and three jars of raspberry jam and marmalade. All things that held up well as preservatives. Mel sighed, reaching for a torn, old backpack and gathering up a couple bottles of water and the last jar of beans. She would have to do another run. Maybe stay overnight with how late it would be by the time she got there. She wondered how long she could keep this up for until there was nothing else to scrounge up.

Mel broke into one of the jars of jam, always making the option to leave those at the barn, for they were much heavier than the beans she was carrying to her scavenge spot. She used a plastic spoon to scoop some of the marmalade up, having herself a brief lunch before climbing out of the loft and hitting the road. Or, lack thereof. The only clues she had as to where she was heading was the sun, as well as a faint line she had created herself through the wheat on her other trips. In reality, she didn’t mind these long trips. It gave her something to do and somewhere to be. The downside was where she was finding the food to begin with, and entering the general area always made her anxious.

 

\----------

 

By the time Mel made it to her destination, it was dark out. A full moon was coming over the flat horizon of wheat, yellowed in the atmosphere to a deep gold and warming up to to lighter shades as it slowly rose into the black, star dotted sky. Looking in the direction of the moon meant more to some other individuals than herself, for its orbit was where two cores resided and spun far from Aperture in stardust purgatory, and with no clear sign that they could reach home. Only one really cared.

Mel stood before her place of origin into the future. A run down, shaken town with the letters 'Aperture’ above it in bold, but chipped paint. Yes, it was to this hell hole she returned to weekly, though she would be daft to take one step downstairs. To do so would be no less than suicide, or what she gathered by the experiences she had. If this GLaDOS was now awake and functioning and was truly worse than AEGIS, then she had much to fear. Still, what was left of the town held precious supplies that she needed to live, and was the only place within miles that she assumed had anything close to edible. Mel moved through a cluster of trees that had grown around the entrance to the scientist’s town, stepping over a crumbled, cement wall to the park area she had entered through when she first arrived all those decades ago. The town, then, was cozy and charming, if a bit simple. There was even a jungle gym for children. Possibly for the families of the scientists that were stationed underground. The overall eeriness in the atmosphere never dulled for Mel, but there were nights that she couldn’t help but stay in the town. Tonight would be one such example. It would be too much to walk now, and with a pack full of cans.

Mel was making her way to the opening of one of the apartment buildings, taking from her bag a flashlight with a dying battery that only omitted a light as dull and yellow as the moon in its current state. She would need to find new batteries while she was here, as well. Just as she was about to walk through broken glass entrance, a plant got snagged on her combat boots and nearly brought her to a knee. When she looked down to shake the leaves off her, she noticed something oddly familiar about what was growing. It was almost nostalgic, even. Setting her flashlight down in the direction of the plant, Mel dug at the mossy, damp dirt the plant was growing from, taking from the soil a round, fat root.

Potatoes!

Mel wanted to laugh, but all she could do was beam from one freckled cheek to the next and shook her hand excitedly, as if gesturing to a companion that was no longer there her incredible find. Had she been able to speak, or even make any kind of sound, she would have squealed about as merrily as she would on Christmas morning. Potatoes were her family’s trademark. They grew potatoes, corn, and a few almond trees on their land. She knew exactly how to rear these so that she had her very own field of potatoes back at the barn! She was going to pack her bag with as many potatoes as she could grab. This assured that even if she found every single can in the facility, she would never go hungry. What potatoes were doing here, she had no idea, but she didn’t very much care to question it either. Placing the one potato in her bag after dusting it of dirt, she reached her now grubby hands into the soil and scooped out as many as she could grab.

 

\----------

 

_**“Thank you, maintenance core. You’re excused.”** _

GLaDOS could hear the core she had called upon quickly leave from behind her, but she paid him no heed. A large monitor appeared from the panels in the wall that had flattened themselves for her, a black and white security camera picking up on movement in the upstairs town. Just as she had suspected. Unlike the videos she had shown Virgil, this feed was coming to her live from the only functioning camera left from that district. As the management rail disappeared back into place from her flawless chamber, the giant watched the human before her carefully.

_**“Playing in the dirt. How…quaint.”** _

Unaware of the camera focused on her, Mel packed her bag as full as she could manage to carry of potatoes, picking up her flashlight and slinging the bag around her back. Finding a spot where a pipe was dripping water onto the ground, and a good explanation as to why the potatoes had been growing, Mel placed her blackened hands underneath and rinsed them of her harvesting. The next step was to find some batteries and then she could tuck herself in early for the evening. She barely had to waste any energy at all in a search and the night was still young. She could wake up early and start heading back before it got too hot out.

GLaDOS barely needed a fraction of a thought, and two large, white droids showed up at her command. They were the only two functioning robots in the facility that had been given mobile legs, as well as arms, and made up for the absence of human testers for GLaDOS. They were descent testers, and flawed, but not in the same ways humans were. Among the the cores, the droids had been affectionately named P-body and Atlas, but GLaDOS was not one for pet names and merely referred to them as–

 _ **“Orange. Blue. I have a new test for you. This one is…unique.”** _ GLaDOS turned the screen towards them, a blissfully unaware Mel entering the tall, glass apartment building through the hole she had attempted to go through earlier before making her discovery, a backpack now bulging with spuds. _ **“This human is your primary objective. She will rest soon. Your test will be complete when you’ve brought her to me unharmed. I will allow you two a brief recess from testing when you are through. I will even allow you one of your unnecessary victory dances.”**_

Atlas and P-body turned to one another, the taller of the two first bouncing in excitement and then giving each other high-fives. Their stereos clicked and whirred in verbal excitement for not only the possibility of a holiday, but this test sounded fun! They got to interact with a human, which was rare. Perhaps once she was down in the facility they could all test together. Three partners sounded better than two! She could be a new friend! The excitement quickly ended when they warranted an impatient snap out of GLaDOS.

_**“Not now. Go.”** _

 

\----------

 

Mel, in her time since waking up, had grown to appreciate a sort of beauty in heights. When you were testing and having to jump across large chambers of toxic goo, heights could be extremely intimidating. There were moments when she felt that her stomach would drop and not make it to the other landing with her. The fear of hovering over endless pits in an excursion funnel when it could turn off for any given reason and send her plummeting. The boots only protected her from so much. Even past all of that, heights had become her friend. It gave her perspective and beauty. From her barn roof, Mel could see for miles. And endless sea of gold, untouched crops. Perhaps at one point this had all been farmland and the absence of humans let them grow wild. Now, when she would stay in the Aperture town, Mel would find the highest room in the tallest Apartment to look up at the stars. Being under an open sky reminded her that she was free to do what she wanted.

The roof of the top floor had collapsed away, and the windows shattered out of existence and dulled on the concrete below. If it were to rain, Mel would make her way into a bed on a lower level, but tonight the sky was clear and perfect for stargazing. The further from the ground the better. The further from the lab the better. Mel sat with her legs over the edge of the apartment building, digging into her can of beans with a spork and letting her mind wander to different places. Proud moments, like winning her Bronze medal. Gold was always preferred by any Olympian, but what an honor to even compete with the best the world had to offer of her time. Memories of fondness, like the small metal ball that got her through the laboratories and to the surface. She had never believed that Virgil was Cave when he first spoke, and the only reason she followed what he said, initially, was that she was lost and alone. Never did she expect him to be what she found on that junk pile, however, and the initial shock had left her paralyzed. He said that he was a core. She had no idea that what he meant by it was that he was something manufactured out of science-fiction.

_“Are you…broken? Just…leave me here!”_

She laughed. He was right below her, and she had no way of reaching him to give him her thanks. If only she had payed attention when they taught sign language at university. Would he have understood then? Could robots, that had no hands of their own, read sign language?

Finishing off her can of beans, Mel flicked it over the edge to the ground far below merely for a small sensation of amusement. The place didn’t look any worse if she littered one small, tin can on a pile of rubble. There was a bed on the upper floor, and was in decent condition despite everything. It had been her usual spot to rest on these trips, and she tucked into it comfortably. Had she the muscle, or a car, she would have brought the mattress wither her back to the barn. Alas, all she could manage were a few blankets and a pillow. Maybe if she kept bringing pillows back every trip she could manage a makeshift bed. With duct tape.

Or a pillow fort.


	3. Chapter 3

_> restoration.88%_capacity_//_

_> function.maintenance_core_22a_online_//_

_> name.VIRGIL_//_

_> repairs.23%_//_

_> time.12:12_8/14/9999999_error_//_

_> good_morning_aperture_science_//_

Virgil's lens opened and his eye spun into function, taking a moment to process his overall vision after sleep mode. He moved some of his parts around, in a sort of ritual stretch, much like humans would do. This was, however, to make sure that everything was still running properly. You could never be too careful, something could have locked up on him. He was feeling pretty good, at the moment. He had knocked the damage dealt to him in the junkyard to only 23%, but unfortunately it seemed his battery continued to not charge to its fullest, and seemed to be getting worse. He wasn't as durable as some of the other cores around Aperture, the oldest running model still in use and the only one left that didn't have solar power. Pretty soon he would be grounded to only the repair wing if he could only go for so long without a charge. His current state allowed him about two weeks.

“Alright! Let's see if we can knock that damage percent back down a couple more notches. I'll be happy with a solid 10. Now...what is on the agenda today?” He honestly didn't think himself capable of getting it down to 0%, mainly because he was already a little worn before he fell off his rail. The droid pulled some numbers into the front of his mind, seeing them physically flash into his gold tinted vision and running statistics at him once more. He rolled his voice as he concentrated.

“I neeeeeeeeduh--”

_> fan1.model_22a_damage_//_

“WHAT?!”

Virgil's speakers spiked, his voice cracking and fading into brief static. He was quick to retreat his shock back, the yellow of his eye shrinking and darting back and forth nervously. He needed to calm down. It was immensely important that he do. One of the fans in his hull had stopped working. This had only happened to him one other time about six months ago. If he got too flustered or excited it could cause him to overheat and break the other one that was still running. They were, thankfully, one of his parts that hadn't been damaged in the fall. So what had he done to make one of them stop working? He would had to have gotten extremely worked up to cause one to stress itself enough to grind to a stop.

Oh, right. The meeting with the top lady from yesterday. Thinking back on it, he was no longer too surprised that he had blown a fan.

“Whatever. Its an easy fix. I just need to take a trip by the old core belt. The place is literally littered with fan parts.” He needed to not get too worked up anymore. If he got too overheated and wasn't getting the right ventilation he could fry something. Again, a lot of the newer cores didn't have that issue, considering they were equipped with a type of chemical refrigeration. Hell, the newer cores had a heater too. The more he thought about it, the more Virgil began to realize he had gotten pretty grumpy about his seniority. He was going to end up talking like his--

Virgil's entire shell twitched with his eye. There had been a thought, but it had passed. Or it had been cut short. A fraction of a file he did not fully possess, possibly? Either way, the afternoon was off to a bad start and he was already in a foul temper. It was just one he'd have to keep to a low simmer until he found his parts. The maintenance core went to a large monitor in the room, using his wifi to tap into the computer and pull up a message for any other robots that came in to see him for a repair while he was out. They appeared in bold, glowing yellow letters against a burnt orange screen and would be hard for anyone to miss.

**'GONE TO THE CORE BELT. STAND BY.'**

It was going to be one of those days, it seemed. The core line was at the very bottom of new Aperture, made shortly after the death of Cave Johnson himself. It was going to take Virgil quite a while to get down there by just cruising on his rail. Some cores risked a shorter travel time by using the tubes, but that's how one gets their eye shattered. Whenever a tube related accident came up with his visitors, he made sure to give them an ear full.

Virgil realized he was more irritated than he should have been, and decided he would hum to himself on his way down to the core belt to pass the time. There was a song he heard around closed off levels that he couldn't identify at first, until he found the file about a month ago. He had looked for it out of curiosity. It sounded very old, but it was catchy and he even found himself mumbling some of the lyrics to himself.

“Time and time again. You will be my only friend...da da da da da~...”

His singing was to come to a slow stop, Virgil pausing on his management rail as he noticed something odd about the area he was in. It had shifted, and one of the chamber rooms were missing. More specifically, one of the single-tested chambers were missing. GLaDOS only ever used the duel-companion chambers these days. He would have thought that maybe she had planned to mix it with something else, but that was only something the rogue core had ever attempted, and he created a MESS in doing so.

“Aagh!” Virgil jolted as his rail shook, his memory flashing back to the dive he took and ready to duck in somewhere more closed off. Reminding himself that he needed to calm down, he listened carefully for what it could have been. Another chamber was moving, the sheer mass of it shaking that end of the facility as GLaDOS' voice could be heard in a dull, patient drone in the far distance. She was speaking over the intercom. Like he had suspected before, she was at it again with Atlas and P-body. He just had to be careful not to wander near any testing chambers she may have had need for. The core had only traveled a few more feet before grinding to yet another halt and looking down at the platform below him, a string of behind the scenes catwalks for the scientists to travel through between one lab to the next. They were useless for the cores, but the two droids that actually had legs happened to be walking under him at that very moment. He wouldn't have been surprised if they had gotten lost and all the commotion was the big lady losing her patience.

“Ah! Atlas! P-body! I think GLaDOS is looking for you two!”

The two white droids stopped, looking up at Virgil with curious, blue and orange optics to their respective owner. They looked at each other in confusion, and then waved back up at the maintenance core with their usual excitable chirps. They spoke in turn, though their language was a little broken for Virgil to fully understand, with P-Body replying to him first.

[We're on break!]

{We're taking a break!}

Well, that was weird. “A break? From testing? She NEVER takes a break from testing.”

The two droids spun in place between their limbs as they turned in the direction of where the single testing chambers had disappeared to, and incidentally the direction they were walking from.

{She's testing! We're not!}

[She's testing with our new friend!]

{Atlas has a new friend!}

[P-body has a new friend!]

Virgil blinked a few times, seriously taken aback by these two every time he had the misfortune of having to speak with them. They spoke too fast, too enthusiastically, and without the proper communicative software to back their excitement up. In a way, he felt a little sorry for them. The two droids were in their own little, cheerful world too often to realize GLaDOS' abuse towards them, or they just didn't care. Once he had caught up to their speech, he looked in the direction GLaDOS was testing, his lens narrowing suspiciously not long after. “Alright, you two enjoy your...break, I guess. I'm going to go see who your new 'friend' is.”

Parting ways with the testing droids, Virgil moved to the east side of Aperture, and needing to go up a few floors. The closer he felt he was growing to GLaDOS, the more anxious he became, but there was no turning away from this. Finding one of the many narrow shafts in the the walls cores often took between chambers, he slowed his pace the smaller the distance shrunk between him and his objective.

“This next test you will be using faith plates. I'm sure you are already familiar with them. Remember that you are only just above their designed weight capacity...so don't push it.”

Getting to a small peak hole from beside one of the viewing offices, Virgil took a glance at the vast, white chamber in all of its complexity. This was a tricky one, so it seemed that whoever GLaDOS had found was experienced. Had the tenacious test subject returned? There was part if him that hoped so. If she could shut GLaDOS down again, the facility was in well enough repair that they could go on without her tyranny for a long time. From his small window of vision, he couldn't yet see who it was that was being tested on.

“C'mon. C'mon....what is it?” He would have used his wifi to intrude on the cameras, if GLaDOS wasn't already using them. That would have been a huge red flag for the larger core if he attempted it.

Finally, some movement at the opposite end of the chamber from the exit. Virgil's lens zoomed in on the figure, who looked dark against such stark white paint. However, the paint began to fade in his vision. The walls crumbled and he felt his optic stiffen at the sight of the human, leaving her the only thing he was capable of seeing. Auburn, red hair tied into a messy bun; filthy, and tattered goldenrod jumpsuit with orange trim and combat boots; freckles dotted around hazy, blue eyes, sunk by dark circles around her lids. She was malnourished, sun-kissed, exhausted, and scared out of her mind, but that face was unmistakable.

“Mel...” Virgil's voice cracked, keeping it to a low hush but his eye darted in utter panic.

How was she here?! She and the other woman should have been gone ages ago. Half a year had gone by, that would have given them the time to escape Aperture for good! This should not have been happening! Did Mel just...waltz in or something?! Virgil wanted so badly to go on one of his verbal tirades to himself, but he would have been heard. GLaDOS was monitoring the test chamber like an eagle after a rat!

Wait...rat. Yes, rat! Rats were brilliant!

Mel seemed to be studying the test, trying to work past her exasperation to make it out of the chamber. Virgil, on the other hand, had only to glance at it to know the solution to the puzzle and was ready for her. His vision left the camber, traveling somewhere else far from there near the turret line. It was a bit of a reach, but close enough that he could tamper with it a little. Finding the glitch in the system that GLaDOS had been struggling to be rid of, he brought the bug to the surface and the factory produced a cubed-turret onto the conveyor belt. Retreating his line of sight back into his own shell, there was a moment's pause before the speakers fizzled to life with a now seemingly irritated GLaDOS.

“I have something that I need to fix. I will be right back. Solve this test in the meantime and you may be rewarded. Just ask yourself whether you prefer chocolate or vanilla and I will get back to you.”

Virgil never understood what that lady's obsession was with lying to the test subjects about cake, but it worked! She was gone and busy for the time being! Now he just had to wait for Mel to start testing. Using his wifi to reach into the walls, Virgil was fixated on Mel's every move. She would need to use a slab of the wall to pop a portal on, projecting her towards the ceiling of the chamber where the exit sat comfortably. Once Mel had her portal set and used the faith plate to launch herself towards it with a cube, Virgil moved that bit of wall aside as quickly as he could.

Mel gasped when she saw her orange portal move, darkness welcoming her as she flew towards the opening and went crashing into a closed off office on the other side of the test chamber. Her cube fell out of her portal device's grasp, dropping to the ground with her and bouncing off a desk. Mel hit the floor and tumbled, losing her balance and skidding to a stop on her side with the wind completely knocked out of her. The human lay on her side, a good bump to the head that didn't help any dizziness inflicted on her from the trip.

Curling into a ball, Mel gripped her head, calming her breathing and letting the aches subside before looking up at the wall she nearly flew into on her way in. It had one of those strange paintings she had found dotted through the facility, orange and blue splashed and smeared along the white walls with numbers that meant nothing to her. This one also had an image of one of the testing cubes, depicted with angel wings at the sides. She had seen one like it only once before, minus the wings, but it had a pink heart in the center of it and it...sang. Like a large music box.

Having to be ever aware in this environment, Mel quickly sat up and looked to the wall she had flown through as it closed, leaving her in the small, confined room with nothing but a dim, yellow light, a useless testing cube, a desk, and some dirty mugs. What had happened? She was almost certain this wasn't part of the test. Maybe the giant she had encountered was tricking her into thinking she had been let go. Mel jumped, struggling to get up after the nasty fall she took when she heard something mechanical behind the wall moving.

Curving into the room and through a small, square opening on the wall behind Mel, was the all too familiar management rail. Moving along bellow it was a sight Mel had been hoping to see since she was dragged back under, the maintenance core shining his yellow optic down at her in clear distress. “Oh my god! Mel! Are you okay?! Are you broken? You didn't hit your head or anything did you?” He knew that she would have taken a bad fall with the stunt he pulled, but it was the only way he could have gotten her out of that chamber.

Mel got to her feet and shook her head at him. Even if she had hit her head, she was okay and saying no was the only way to let him know that she wasn't...'broken'. Her heart was racing from adrenaline, relief, and excitement. Even if she could speak, there were no words to tell him how happy she was that he had showed up.

Virgil came closer so that he was hovering right above Mel, his optic practically popping out of his hull an his handle-bars flexing outward in a fit. “WHAT are you doing here?! HOW are doing here? I mean, how are you here? Did she drag you here or were you insane enough to come back on your own?!”

Mel didn't know how to answer that. There were no simple yes or no answers when it came to Virgil's little panics. Besides that, it was actually a mixture of the two. She had walked back to ground zero, but it was GLaDOS' droids that pulled her under. So, holding up her hand and shrugging, Mel made a so-so, tilting gesture with it. It was the best she could do.

“You know what, we are going to get you a whiteboard or something. Okay, look. We don't have a whole lot of time. Follow me and keep your head down. GLaDOS should be back here any second! We can talk more once I find somewhere...somewhere that just isn't here. If we can make it to a room without cameras we should be fine.” An idea clicked, and he realized that his repair wing didn't have any security cameras in it at all. “I know just the place. Let's go!”

 

\------------

 

The catwalks wouldn't all connect back to the repair wing, so along the way there had to be some improvisation. Mel clutched the portal device in her hands, this one much newer than the one she was used to, with a sleek, white polish and definitely more finished. Or at least the prongs at the end weren't broken with a paperclip as replacement. She had to admit, even though this one was heavier, she wasn't being shocked by the energies that used to fly out of the center at her with the old one. Virgil instructed Mel on shortcuts to his station, finding moon paint on some of the lab walls along the way and using them to make traveling a lot quicker. At one point the management rail stopped following the catwalk, to which the core had to give her directions to follow, promising to meet her at their destination.

Mel looked high above her to an office built into the side of a steel plated wall, with only one stairway leading up to it, but not one she could directly get to. The faded windows in the office shown brightness and bleached white walls on the other side, but nothing she could use with the glass between them. Suddenly, a little dark shadow moved into view, with the glowing yellow in the center being the only clear indicator that it was Virgil from that distance. The robot jerked sharply forward, Mel jumping back with the commotion it created, and shards of glass falling down into the misted depths of Aperture. He was too far up for her to hear when he called out to her, but she got the idea. Shooting a white wall beside her with the blue end of her device, she stuck its orange twin into the office and stepped through.

The maintenance core's work room was very bright compared to some of the other offices she had visited in her time here, and had most of the recently updated equipment from new Aperture. The parts laying around, on the other hand, were all kinds of new and old alike, with some being from broken turrets the tenacious human had blown up, to an old radio from downstairs.

Virgil turned to watch her enter, and then motioning to the broken window of his station. “I'll, uh, get that fixed later. Sorry about the mess in here. If I knew I was going to have company I would have tidied up...eheheh.” He made a sound as if to clear his throat, but even he had to admit the action was completely unnecessary.

Mel put her portal gun down one of the work benches, motioning to Virgil to close in nearer to her. He was more than perplexed and shook his optic at the woman.

“What? What is this? I don't understand what you need.”

Mel turned around and grabbed an unopened, metal crate with parts specifically personalized to the Atlas droid, dragging it closer to her and standing up on it so that she was at Virgil's height. The whole time the personality core watched with endless confusion, up until she wrapped her arms around him and gave the robot a tight squeeze.

“Oh! Oh, I see! This is a hug! Right. Um, heh... circumstances aside, its good to see you too, Mel. Can't exactly return the gesture myself but, uh...here's a handle wiggle.” Virgil moved his top bar up and down. Humans were so very strange, but he did understand her need for physical contact after everything she had been through and wasn't willing to deny her it. He waited until she was good and ready to let go, using the leverage she now had to his advantage and look her straight in the eyes. They had business to address. “Now what in Johnson's name went wrong, Mel? You hit the road a while ago and GLaDOS doesn't exactly have legs of her own to go after you with. How did this happen?”

Mel shook her head, looking to the floor and feeling her throat and mouth dry up with the sheer frustration she had with not being able to just say something! She looked around the room for anything she could use to reach him. Paper? A pencil? Chalk?

Virgil knew all too well what she was distressed over, and moved towards the monitor where he had left a message for the other robots. Clearing it of its history, he made a blank canvas for the woman to work with. “Hey, Mel? Try this keyboard. Just punch in what you want to say. It'll be like when we were shutting down AEGIS.”

She approached the monitor, testing some of the keys and glancing up at the screen as she did.

_-aaaaaaaaaaaaa_

_-helloverg_

“Oh, hold on Mel. You use that bar at the bottom to space your words.”

_-Like a typewriter?_

“Yup!”

_-Hello, Vergil!_

“Ahahah! Hi, Mel. And that's actually Virgil with two Is instead of an E. Okay, you're doing good. Say what's on your mind.”

_-I left aperture and started walking as far as I could go but there is nothing. There are no people or buildings. Just miles of wheat fields. I found an old barn and I have been living there these past few months, but there is no food. The only supplies I could find are the ones inside the town stationed above Aperture where I came out. Every now and then I walk back to the the gates to find things that I need and then travel to the barn again. Sometimes I sleep over night if its gotten too dark for me to head back. Last night I did another supply run, but when I fell asleep I was grabbed by two large robots with blue and orange eyes. They looked like you but bigger and with arms and legs._

“Those are P-body and Atlas. They do what GLaDOS tells them to, but they're completely harmless. They probably didn't think they were putting you in any real danger.” He almost wanted to be upset with Mel for making the mistake of coming back here even once, let alone on multiple occasions. He knew she had no choice if what she said was true and there really was no sign of any intelligent life on the surface. For that, he couldn't be mad. He was sure that if she had better options she would have kept going and never looked back. He didn't need food, water, and sleep like she did. Just a battery. A Failing battery.

In that case, he completely understood her limitations.

“This is trouble, Mel. Trouble for you. Trouble for me. Even if I get you out of here and we both end up scot-free without GLaDOS catching onto us, you aren't going to last out there. Have you tried any other directions? Which way did you go?”

_-East._

“What about North? South? West?”

_-After finding the barn I walked several different ways until I thought I would collapse. I was hoping if I stayed at the barn I might be able to hail help or someone would come by. I realized over time that wasn't going to happen and that I would have to try something different eventually._

“Alright, fair enough. What you really need is a vehicle of some sort...” The light bulb inside Virgil's thought processor went off, and he lit up at Mel. “There are cars inside the salt mines of Aperture. In fact, they are right around the offices where I found you. They are in some serious need of repairs, but if I can get one up and running and you fill it with supplies then you could go for miles!”

Mel turned away from the screen, expressing as much excitement for the plan as she was able to with a smile, but overall looking beat and withered. She had been doing everything in her power to keep from passing out, for the first time she did she had gotten electrocuted. Virgil blinked at her, recognizing the weariness well and backing up further into the repair wing.

“You know, Mel. GLaDOS can't see that you are here. You should get some rest. When you're feeling up to it we can head down. Until then take a nap, or something. Recharge the old batteries.”

Mel was more than willing to take him up on that offer. Leaving the monitor, Mel found a corner of the room that wasn't as cluttered as the rest, pushing some small gears aside to lie down on the cold, hard floor. It was a floor that she welcomed fully and gratefully, because she could finally close her eyes and get some sleep. Her eyes burned, even after being shut and the front of her head throbbed from all the sprinting, jumping, and flying she had done in the past few hours. Her body allowed her only a few moments of awareness after lying down until she was completely out.

Virgil sighed, turning to look at the screen where Mel's messages still remained and slowly shook his optic at the amount of lunacy he planted himself into once again. “Ah, jeez...”

_Beep. Beep. Beep._

Something within the room began to make noises, Virgil jumping and looking around frantically for what it was so that he could turn it off. There were people trying to sleep in here, damn it!

Finding the source didn't make him feel any better. Virgil stared at the blinking, yellow light on the east wall of the repair wing and just about fell off of his rail again. Still minding the sleeping human, he could only croak out a single, fearful, anguished sound.

“Uh-oh...”


	4. Chapter 4

He did not bother to wake Mel. He did not tell her that he would be leaving. He did not worry her tired head with where he needed to be. GLaDOS' call to the central core was too ill-timed to not be about Mel. The last thing Virgil wanted was the human tagging behind him, only to be picked up by the mother computer herself on the way. No, he would let her sleep and see what was to come. That didn't mean Virgil wasn't about to fall to pieces with how violently he had been shaking on his way there. He returned to the central core chamber, the atmosphere heavier than it had been before with the awful mood GLaDOS found herself in. She swayed from side to side, in an almost calming rhythm for those who didn't know better. Her movements, harmonized with her silky, low voice, was enough to lull anyone ignorant enough into a false sense of security.

GLaDOS was not willing to pad their conversation with meaningless small talk this time and got straight to it upon the smaller core's arrival. _**“There is a human test subject loose within my facility. The same one you helped free not too long ago.”**_

Virgil couldn't speak this time. He was worried if he did say anything and she didn't know it was him that had helped Mel again then he could potentially make things a whole lot worse for them. GLaDOS continued, staring right into him.

_**“She escaped one of my testing tracks. I would assume, being close to you, the human may have sought you out. Have you seen her?”** _

He had to speak. Not saying anything would be just as suspicious! Oh, but he was a terrible liar! He didn't have a single lying bone in his body! He didn't have any bones, or a body, so what did he have?! Not good lying skills, that's for damn well sure! “I haven't seen any humans around here. Not since the last one you, uh, dealt with at least.”

 ** _“Tragic. I was looking forward to more tests with her. I even found a real cake. Oh, well. She couldn't have gone far.”_** GLaDOS brought a monitor to her, and while she took a read at the lettering that appeared, Virgil felt a small twinge of relief form at his center. Had it really been all that? She didn't know where Mel had gone or what had happened?

_**“How is your fan?”** _

That had caught him off guard more than anything else she had spoken to him about in the past twenty-four hours. His fan? “Ah, it's...it's broken?”

 ** _“I know. Were you not going down to the early core line to retrieve fresh parts? It is here. On your personal monitor.”_** The screen GLaDOS controlled turned towards Virgil with her, the letters 'GONE TO THE CORE BELT. STAND BY.' in bold.

He had the worst of feelings creeping up from behind him. He knew he was caught. He knew it. Without even realizing it, Virgil had begun to back up towards the exit. “You...you can see that?”

 _ **“Oh, I can see many things.”**_ The screen flashed, a wall of text replacing the previous message, and seeming to be taken directly from Virgil's own computer.

_-aaaaaaaaaaaaa_

_-helloverg_

_-Like a typewriter?_

_-Hello, Vergil!_

A mechanical claw, not unlike the ones Virgil had in his own workspace, swooped down from the ceiling above and snatched onto Virgil's sides before he even had time to cry out. He was yanked from his management rail and brought dangerously close to the burning yellow optic of the lead core. The maker and the destroyer. The final word in all of Aperture, and she was glaring directly into him with intense ferocity. **_“For example: I can see that you have been lying to me. I will give you  a fair warning now and tell you that the best thing you can do for yourself at this point is for you not to say a single word and listen very, very carefully.”_**

Virgil didn't say a word. He didn't make a peep. The most noise that came out of him was the shutter of his eyelids closing and opening again in understanding of her demands.

**_“I'm glad we understand each other. You have my permission to let the human test subject rest. For now. When she has woken, you are to bring her to this chamber. She will follow your guidance without question. I would like to continue testing with her, alive and well, but I can not allow her to roam freely in my facility. If you do not do as I say, then not only will I have no choice than to weed her out with neurotoxin, but you will be caught and incinerated immediately. Do I make myself clear?”_ **

Virgil's optic shifted up and down, still holding his silence. However, other small claws came out from either side of him, bringing him lower to the floor where panels opened up to reveal dozens of little tools, and all moving towards him. Despite being asked to keep quiet, Virgil couldn't help but blurt out a scream as they entered his hull, clearly taking one of his outer shells off and snaking into his mechanics. He could feel them working away at something, but he was driven mad with fear and the thought did not occur to him to run his statistics. After what seemed like forever, the tools snapped his shell back on and disappeared into the floor once again. The claw that held him snapped its way upwards and placed the core right back onto his rail.

Once everything was done with, Virgil shook himself off as if he had been sprayed with water, and searched for what it was they had done to him.

_> fan1.model_22a_running_//_

She had fixed his fan? He didn't understand what that meant, but he focused back to GLaDOS as she leaned in towards him, her head alone three times as big as he was. **_“Do not forget... I can fix you just as easily as I can take you apart. Piece...by...piece...”_**

 

\---------

 

Virgil paced back and forth. Sure, he could have gone and put himself on temporary sleep mode as well while he was there and save himself the energy and possibly another fan bust, but who could sleep right now? Mel, that's who. Because humans weren't meant to be tossed around to their physical limitations without food, water, or rest. In an odd sort of way, they were just like machines. You can't make a computer run all the time without a charge. You can't fling a computer around a room and expect it not to have a few screws loose by the end of it. In any case, though the pacing did not make him feel any better, it gave him SOMETHING to do while he waited for Mel to wake up. He tried other things to not only occupy his time, but his mind so that he didn't have to think of the life-threatening talk he had with the mother core. He picked through the spare parts on the floor, and even got to organizing them a bit so that the place wasn't such a mess. He called in a repair for the window he broke. Anything. Just flippin' ANYTHING to spare him from having to think about it.

Mel slept for a solid eight hours on that floor. She could have gone longer, but her own subconscious alarm clock had gone off to remind her that even though she was in good company, she was still in danger. Even with nothing to cushion the hard surface she had slept on, Mel felt as if that was the best sleep she had ever gotten in her life. Putting a hand to her lips, she yawned, sitting up and letting herself stretch. Virgil turned around at the sound of her stirring, zipping over her head and Mel already recognizing that he was a little more jittery than usual. She eyed him carefully.

“Uh, hey Mel! How-how was your sleep? You feeling good? Got some pep in your step?”

Mel nodded, but she was still suspicious of him. Wanting to talk it out, she got to her feet and moved towards the computer, only to be blocked by the core.

“Woah! Hold on, we can't use that anymore! Bad idea! In fact, it was a bad idea that's led up to some even worse news. You might want to take a seat for this one.”

Mel shrugged and sat down on the Atlas box from earlier.

“Okay good. Now, this isn't one of those good news bad news situations. It's just all bad news. Really, really bad! Like, multiple layers of bad news.” He took in a deep breath, which actually did serve a purpose for a core like himself. It allowed for his airways to clear and calm themselves so he didn't over work anything, though the verbal sound he made in doing it was completely for show. “For starters, GLaDOS knows you are here. In my office.” The woman jolted out of her seat, Virgil jerking back in response and waving his handles at her excitedly. “Hold up! Hold up! You're fine...for now. Again, lets just try and stay calm here. She was able to break into my computer and pulled up everything that was typed out in the past few hours. Meaning everything you had to say to me. So, yeah, she does know you are here. She gave me permission to let you take a nap...Mel, go ahead and sit back down. It only gets worse from there.”

Mel did as he said, sinking back into her seat with a hand to her temple and rubbing at it gingerly.

“She wants me to bring you to her. She told me that you would listen to what I say and that I could get you to follow me into her chamber...as a trap. If I don't, then you will be pumped full of neurotoxin and I'll be sent into a fiery pit. That wasn't a play on the meaning of Hell, by the way. I mean Aperture literally has a fiery pit underneath it she chucks misbehaved robots into.”

The woman stared at the floor. It wasn't that she hadn't been listening to Virgil, but she could think better with a blank surface rather than watching his twitchy mannerisms. From the cores point of view, though, it was hard to read into just what she was thinking. He decided to continue and wait to see what direction she responded to the best.

“So...here are our options. Either we do as she says and you run a few tests until I can think of another way to get you out of here...or, we risk it and make a break for old Aperture with our original plan.” He wasn't going to admit to either one of these choices having a small chances of success. That was just a given. “What do you say, Mel? I'm up for whatever you want to do. We just gotta do it fast.”

Mel's head was hung, still looking at the ground and her hand rested over her temple since she stopped massaging it. She trusted Virgil to get her out of here just as much as he trusted her to make sure he was not going to be crushed by that maniac. It was a mutual respect that she couldn't remember having with any other person she had ever known as far back as her memory would allow her, or at least no one outside of her close family. He was waiting on her word on what to do because he thought she knew best and he depended on her. She wasn't about to let them be caught. Looking up at the core, she raised two fingers at him.

“Plan number two then, yeah? Alright, old Aperture it is. I don't know when she was planning on coming to check on us, but it's best we go now. Get your gun. We are out of here!”

 

\---------

 

Virgil peaked around a corner of a poorly pulled together wall of flimsy metal, wood, and some kind of material that probably should have been used as carpet instead. It was typical for an office, though, where the walls were only meant to separate cubicles instead of providing any real privacy. Taking a look around the ever-abandoned office space, he turned to Mel and nodded when he didn't see anything that could be of danger to them. “Okay, it's clear. These are some of the panel and office rooms from around the time GLaDOS turned the neurotoxin against the scientists. Unfortunately it was during 'Bring Your Daughter to Work Day'. There shouldn't be any cameras here at all, so she can't follow us! There's a lift past here that can take us into some of the lower levels. We can walk from there. Or you can walk. I might need to be carried.”

Mel had been staring at the ceiling as Virgil spoke, finding it interesting that there was yet another potato plant, but this one was growing from above. She snapped out of it when Virgil turned back around and came at her.

“Are you listening to me? Hey, I know you're tired but we have to be on our game!”

Mel blinked at him when she was brought out of her own thoughts, raising a hand and shaking her head with an apologetic grimace.

“Do you know any sign? Like, at all?” At this, Mel held her chin, looking to her left at the padded wall in thought, before nodding and putting her thumb to her forehead, straightening out the rest of her fingers and pulling them away in a downwards motion. She did the same again, but this time to her chin.

“Okay, yes, that's dad and mom. Anything else?”

Mel shrugged, pulling her lips taught in a frown and then holding up her right hand. She held down her middle and ring fingers in the 'I love you' sign, forcing a wide, exaggerated smile to go with it.

“Cute. That's not going to help us, though...also do you hear a ringing sound? I keep hearing a ringing...”

She could only shrug again, and was honestly growing a little irritated. It wasn't like she wanted to be mute, or had any choice in the matter. If she could speak she would have, and while his insistence of her communication did make sense, there wasn't a whole lot she could really do about it. She wasn't going to magically be cured, and she doubted that even in this day and age there was medicine for what had happened.

Virgil was determined, however, and started turning left and right, peering through the small spaces of the conference room and eyeballing a desk. “Alright, Mel! I got it! See that little pink square on that desk? Go grab that, and look for a pencil while you're at it.”

Well, wasn't he bossy today? Mel did what he had asked, though, and retrieved the neon pink square he had spoken of. Before her search for a pencil began, Mel inspected the object, finding that it was all small pieces of paper stuck to one another. Peeling one loose, she realized what it was Virgil wanted and let it drop to the floor. There had been a pencil on the desk beside the one where she had grabbed the cube of paper, bringing it back to the robot and immediately starting to write on its surface.

“There you go! Those are sticky notes. You can just peel them off whenever you are done writing a--”

Ssssh-tk!

Virgil looked down where Mel had scribbled on the tiny, pink piece of paper and then tapped the adhesive end to his bottom handlebar. He wiggled it around a little to see if it would come off, pulling it up as far as he could so he could read whatever it was she wrote.

Hello, Virgil! ✿

She'd gotten both I's this time. For an extra added touch, Mel had even drawn a flower in the bottom corner of the note. The core looked back up at her and shook his eye in disapproval, his lower lid sinking half way down so that he had the appearance of someone acutely fed up. “Exactly how old are you?”

Mel would have laughed. Her shoulders shook and she breathed, but voiceless all the same. She took the sticky note from the handle-bar and pocketed it, along with the rest of the notes and pencil. They continued walking, but Virgil still seemed to be a little on edge. Mel didn't put any blame to it and knew he was being sharp out of nervousness. When the stakes climbed up into the sky, Virgil was the first to snap. “I guess I'll pretend we both are aware of the certain doom that awaits us the longer we stay in new Aperture. It's okay, though, you just keep making your cute sticky notes while I try to find us that lift. Now...let's see...I think it's down this flight of stairs...uh-oh.”

Virgil's stopped, him and Mel looking upon a great chunk of the walk that had been torn out. There was a shattered tube where one of the Aperture elevators had obviously resided in the past, but was no longer available. It appeared to have fallen in some of the wreckage and taken the stairs with it. It was most likely still miles below them. Mel turned to Virgil, raising an eyebrow at him and the ball-shaped robot backing up.

“Don't look at me like that, how was I was supposed to know it was out of order? It's fine! Not a big deal! We'll just keep heading this way until we find the next one.”

Mel followed him back to the offices, a glint of white catching her eye to the far left and the woman raising her portal gun. She stiffened and poised, searching through the vines and potatoes that hung down through the ceiling for any more movement. Virgil had not yet caught on to her alarm, and had already started heading towards their next exit. Mel wanted to call him back, or at least turn around to wave him down, but she had no choice but to keep her eyes on a broken window she could see through the doorway. The view on the other side stayed dark and green with foliage, but it was suddenly disturbed by a bright flash of blue. Mel breathed in sharply, ducking out of the doorways and taking out a note, writing something down on it hurriedly and running to catch Virgil. She reached up and slapped a hand to the back of his casing, the robot spinning almost immediately and looking extremely offended...and maybe even a little embarrassed.

“What in the world did you do that fo--?!” He was hasty to shut up when Mel put a finger to her lips, fear in her eyes. She held up a fresh note, Virgil leaning in to scan her handwriting into his system and find letters that matched. It all happened at the same speed it took a human too, with maybe a fraction of a delay more, but once he had her message her jerked back.

Atlas! P-Body!

“How do they know we're here? I made sure to be extra careful of where we traveled so that she couldn't send them after us.” He made sure to keep his voice at a hush, as flustered as it may have been. “Did they see you?”

Mel could only shrug in response. It was hard to tell, but if she saw them there was a good chance they might have seen caught sight of her first.

“Then we're booking it! Go!”

Mel sped around and took off as fast as her legs could carry her through the offices, looking for anything painted white as she went and Virgil just keeping up with her on his rail. She could hear the heavy clanking of the droids behind her in hot pursuit, their odd speech carrying and echoing off the massive walls. Even with the sleep Mel had gotten, she was still sore from her previous tests, her legs and arms screaming at her with an unbearable burn in her nose. It reminded her of the track. Had it been so long that she no longer could reach her limit? She was ashamed that this was all she was capable of. Not letting the pain hinder her any longer, Mel pushed it all aside and bolted. Germany to her left. Russia to her right. England pushed past her, and she sped up to put them all behind. People were screaming, and her ears throbbed with the sound of her own blood pumping through them.

“Mel! Conversion gel!”

Her eyes snapped up at Virgil's warning, just as they were leaving the confined offices and entered what looked to be a retired testing area. This place seemed to have no rhyme or reason behind its many layers of structure, but Mel took it. She grabbed a portal beside her, and then placing its blue sister end up at a high catwalk far from Atlas and P-body. Thinking quickly, she got rid of the orange one at ground level and stuck it right next to the thin strip of conversion gel beside the blue one. If she left them there the droids couldn't use that space for their own. Virgil was able to find not one, but several rails that went past the walk she had landed on, but once he got up there he frowned. There was an elevator right behind her and it had an emancipation grill.

Virgil and Mel both knew that there was a possibility he couldn't go through that. Mel moved her head to the side, motioning for them to get going and find another one before the droids found a way to get to their level. However, in the time that they had been running,Virgil had discovered something concerning. The ringing he had been hearing before had gone off again, and grew louder the closer Atlas and P-body were. Now that they were far off, he could barely hear so much as a blip. Shaking his optic at Mel, he refused to follow her.

“I-I can't...go ahead and take this one.”

Mel didn't need a note for this, and she mouthed a single word to him. 'Why?'

Virgil's mind flashed back to the tools inside his shell, tinkering with who knows what while they fixed his fan. He should have known that she had let him off too easy. How could he have been such an idiot?! “I think GLaDOS planted a tracking device in me. I can hear it. The ringing from earlier...it's louder when the droids are near. If I go with you they're going to know our every move...SHE'S going to know our every move. You know how to get down there on your own, you don't need me to go with you.”

Mel was in shock, her hands shaking. There was the all too familiar noise of a portal opening from somewhere down the walk from them and she jumped to attention with the portal gun aimed. Not that it could do much without any other white walls in sight. Virgil spoke up again, Mel looking at him over her shoulder as the core was backing up further on his rail, the chasm of mist far bellow him. He looked scared. So, very scared, and Mel took her attention away from the droids to reach out for him, but he was much too far from her reach over the metal rail.

“She'll grab me if I go anywhere else on my own. I'm, uh...I think I'm just going to meet you down there. Its not like I haven't done this before. See ya later...Mel.”

Even in the state the maintenance core was in, Mel wouldn't have guessed his next stunt. It only took a few simple clicks and he let go of the management rail, dropping clean out of the air. Mel jumped forward, almost falling off the walk in an attempt to grab him, but he was already disappearing into the fog that hung between the cold, damp walls of Aperture. Whenever, and wherever he were to land, there was no humanly way possible to have heard him. Mel gripped the rusty, iron bars between her hands until her knuckles were white, her face flushed red with her disturbance of what she witnessed, and couldn't help but stare into the fog where the robot had disappeared. She heard the droids approaching, gritting her teeth and closing her eyes to stop them from stinging. Slamming a boot into the metal mesh below her feet, Mel turned and stormed into the lift.


	5. Chapter 5

There was no straight lines through Aperture. No up and down, nor left and right. The enrichment center standing on its own, without the help of its closed off districts, was a city long labyrinth of metal. One would find themselves having to go up if they wanted a chance of going down, or loop around some insane path just to get to something originally seen from a few feet away. The portals added to the madness, while simultaneously taming it with their shortcuts. There was no going straight down for Virgil's retrieval. The elevator Mel had taken did not go that far, but it did give her an idea of where she needed to be. Her ride down had been no less than monstrous. A tight space bottling up a kettle of hot emotions seeping from the woman inside. Mel leaned her back against the glass of the elevator with her arms crossed, absolutely steaming.

Who gave him the right?

Dropping off his management rail into a pit was no form of any plan. It was not their only option. He had survived his drop into the junkyard offices because he had gotten lucky. Now Mel was by herself, and blind to the world around her. No one to guide her. Just an insane computer out for her blood, and with two droids to sic on her like hell hounds. Her mind kept winding its way back to Virgil, questions rising around the core. Why didn't he just tell her how to remove the tracking device? Why couldn't they have just kept running? She had no way of knowing if he was okay, or if GLaDOS had found a way to collect him.

God, she was just so FURIOUS!

Mel slammed her fist into the side of the thick glass, her eyes stinging and red from the tears that threatened to fall but chose to stay. He was the only familiar thing that she had and he left her. Stupid metal eyeball. If he wasn't broken when she found him, then she was going to break him...

When the lift had reached its last stop, Mel stepped out, inhaling to calm her nerves.

_“Lets just...take a breath...and start over...”_

Easier said than done. In this case, it only helped so much. She was now far from the droids, but still within GLaDOS' range and with no knowledge as to which areas were safe to cross. Whatever it was Virgil did, or whatever wifi even meant, he knew just where to go. While Mel had a vague idea of how to get to old Aperture from where she was, there was no guarantee that she would make it there. Either way, there was one thing blatantly obvious. She needed to keep going down.

Catching sight of some white paint on a platform below her, Mel searched for one closest to her arrival, finding a small office space with conversion gel on the inside and using that to reach it. It was just going to be a whole lot of hopping around until she was low enough.

For the first time since being brought back, Mel was left to her own devices and without a robot speaking into her ear. She hadn't ever imagined what GLaDOS must have been like, outside of destructive. Mel had expected her to be like AEGIS. Emotionless, inhuman...Perhaps on her own, and without such a comparison, she may have seemed that way, but GLaDOS did have emotion and she was not completely inhuman. That made her far more dangerous than AEGIS ever was. Virgil was good at his job because he cared. GLaDOS was good at her job because she hated. When Mel had been shoved before her, she could feel herself being studied from every hair on her head to counting the freckles splattered along her cheeks. Her stare was heated with a hatred for humans, and she meant to do her harm, but not all at once. The pain she felt through the tests was only the physical part of her torment.

_**“I thought I would take the liberty of catching you up to date on important events you missed while you were asleep. Marilyn Monroe passed, 1962. Elvis Presley passed, 1977. Lucille Ball passed, 1989. Frank Sinatra passed, 1998. To name a few...”** _

_**“I've been reading up on your files. It says here that you won a bronze medal in the Olympics. Ah, here's a picture. Were there others like this one? I had thought the family was meant to take a photo with the winners. Oh, well. I'm sure they were just busy.”** _

_**“I wanted to congratulate you on your performance. I had assumed someone from your time period would suffer in a, well...less primitive environment. I thought it was worth mentioning that you are doing a decent job of putting the past where it belongs. Other subjects would have cared that their family is now dead. I like that about you.”** _

The machine thrived on psychological torture, and got a sick rise from it. She had been relentless, something new coming up in each chamber to jab at Mel with. Like testing a freshly sharpened knife on someone's heart. Thinking back on it all now, Mel would have preferred AEGIS over GLaDOS simply because he didn't throw insults at her and was only doing his job, even if that job meant taking her out.

Mel found herself in a long, confined hallway with the lights burning out and only a few left to flicker dimly on. She crept forward, feeling the dread of claustrophobia and the possibility of anything being able to corner her easily in such tight quarters. There were intersecting halls up ahead, and Mel heard something familiar click at the end of them. It was the mechanical whir of a turret opening its wings, and Mel backed up. She could see a door on the other side of the hall she currently occupied, but to get there she would have needed to cross the turrets.

_“We're different.”_

_“We're different.”_

Different? Mel chanced a peek, her chest falling with an exhale when she realized that the turret she had been afraid of was facing a closed door with its back to her. The same could be said for a second turret in a similar situation down the hall from the first she spotted. The woman was ready and able to walk past them, when the turret closest to her called out again.

_“We're different. I want my friend.”_

That made Mel pause, staring between the two turrets curiously. Could they have friends? She hadn't realized they were sentient enough to care. She approached the turret nearest to her, taking a risk and reaching down to wave a hand in front of its red, laser eye. It did not shoot. In fact, it closed its wings with a trill and spoke up again.

_“We will not harm you.”_

Usually even the slightest movement in front of their vision got them firing, and Mel made the decision to turn the turret around with her portal gun, ready to jump out of the way into the next hall if its guns opened again. Nothing happened, however, and Mel squatted down to get a good look at it with a smile. She was very pleased with herself to have found a docile turret. It seemed to study her, Mel having to squint her eyes and turn her head a moment when the red laser came too close.

_“We will sing for you. Please bring me my friend.”_

Mel nodded, moving to the other door and waving a hand in front of this turret in the same fashion. Once again, it kept its guns to its side and only spoke as a response to her movements. _“Dante was chased to the gates of Hell by wild beasts in the dark of the night. He was sent a guide of reason to help his journey and escape through the mountain of purgatory when Dante was tempted to stay.”_ The woman narrowed her eyes, wondering if this one may have been broken. Even so, she turned the poor thing around and brought it closer to the other turret so that they were facing one-another.

_“There you are.”_

_“There you are.”_

Mel couldn't help but smile, feeling a genuine connection with the two lonely turrets finding company with each other. She backed off with a start, however, when they both opened their arms. Her muscles tightened, sprung to make a run for it, but no bullets came. Instead, the two turrets moved their wings in motion, a melody filling the hall. When the first turret offered to sing for her, Mel didn't know what exactly she expected, but found herself pleasantly surprised. In fact, she couldn't help but think of the song as familiar in some way, but she couldn't quite place it. She relaxed letting her portal gun drop to her side and sat cross-legged on the cool floor to listen to her own personal concert. Her nerves had calmed down, and her head clear of the emotional fit she had worked herself into. All because of a little music. Something she hadn't had the pleasure of listening to in a very, very long time. When the turrets had finished playing for her, they shut their guns and gave her one final message before falling silent.

_“Thank you.”_

_“Thank you.”_

Feeling a sense of rejuvenation, Mel reached out to pat the turrets like well behaved children before getting up to head off again, opening the far door to the outside. She smiled when she stepped out into a vast, dark platform reaching as far as they eye could see and disappearing into a haze. Building sized blocks that represented the testing chambers sat on springs as thick around as redwood trees and closed off by a single line of wire fencing. 'Keep Out' signs were spread out among the fence, and though Mel was happy to be here she wouldn't want to stay for long. What it meant to her was the vault entrance a few yards away going into Aperture Innovators, but the last time she had seen it she always expected something would come out of the far mist at her. There was talk of mantis-men running around, after all.

Thankfully the vault was still open, and all she had to do was step into the lift to take her down. The old piece of junk was rickety compared to the other elevators further up, and Mel didn't fully trust it, but it was the best she could do. It would take her right to the office junkyards, but she doubted Virgil would have landed there twice.

Mel could smell smoke over the ever pungent odor of the toxic ooze's chemicals, rust and decay much more relevant than it had been in the polished testing chambers. Here there were hardly any white painted surfaces, so a lot of her travel would be done on foot. When the lift stopped, Mel twisted her way through the engine room passages into a massive, iron valley of scrap metal skyscrapers. She watched as something fell from the high ceilings in the distance and made a splash in a body of liquid Mel could not yet see. To be safe, she wanted to check the junkyard offices, carefully weaving her way past patches of fire that burned in oil spills along the floor.

A lot of what Mel could see had been changed from the last time she had traveled this part of Aperture, and from what she could tell it was from the flooding AEGIS had put this part of the facility through. Thankfully it had all been drained away long ago, or she wouldn't have been able to get as far as she had. It was safe to say, though, that a lot of the familiar checkpoints from her first run through were swept away. She was not able to find the exact location where she had discovered Virgil, but since she knew she was around the general area where he would have landed then she meant to keep looking.

Leaving the offices, Mel turned over every scrap of metal and searched every pile of broken robot parts for anything round. She had found the hull of a core tossed among the wreckage, but it was silver instead of Virgil's reddish-brown and had most of its insides torn out seemingly ages ago. Mel held the shell between her hands and couldn't help but feel sympathy. Had it once been as alive as her friend was? She realized there was a very fine line in Aperture between what was considered sentient or not. She wasn't sure if she was suitable to make that kind of judgment anymore. She placed the core shell back on its pile and walked away, reminding herself that she still had one to save.

In the ruin of the dump, and all of its broken parts, there was one thing very well built and the sight of it caught Mel's eye just from how out of place it was. In the side of the rocky walls that made up the salt mines there had been a pale blue and white door with a wheel latch blocked off by some of the fallen debris. It was nothing like the other ones Mel had seen, thinking back to the one she had struggled to open and Virgil had given her smack for. This looked much newer. Like something out of the Enrichment Center, but it hadn't fallen. Certainly hadn't taken damage by the toxic waste. Mel's first thought was, 'that's where they must keep the mantis-men'. It was obviously something she wanted no part in seeing.

So, of course, she went to open the latch. Had Virgil been there he probably would have scolded her, but the anticipation behind the mystery of the out of place door was just killing her. Pushing all of the damp scrap metal out of the way of the door, Mel attempted to turn the sleek door wheel but it would not budge. Seeing a keypad beside the frame, she wondered if it was locked rather than her poor handle-spinning capabilities. It seemed to be a four digit number key, to which Mel could only think of one that had worked before for her.

2056

Mel took a step back, the keypad beeping and something that sounded like steam being released from inside. The wheel on the door jerked to the right an inch, the woman gripping it once again and giving it a spin, this time with little to no resistance. Pushing the door in, it powered itself away from her and slowly opened the rest of the way on its own. Mel hovered in the doorway, peering into the pitch black darkness on the other side and squinting to see what it had to offer. There was certainly no noise, or detection of movement, and from what little light she had given it, there seemed to be a wall not too far down. The room wasn't as big as she had been expecting. Leaving the latch wide open for a quick escape, she cautiously stepped in with her gun raised. If anything she could use it as a shield.

The human reached a hand out and searched the wall beside the door, hoping to find a light switch. The wall was made from the jagged rock of the mine shaft, so when her fingertips slid over a surface as smooth as ice she stopped and waited. A blue light pulsed from underneath her palm, beeping softly. In a line, two rows of lights of the same blue color lit up in a wave until they reached the opposite wall. However, instead of lighting the room from the ceiling, they were all personalized to several cylinder shaped devices lined up against the west and east walls in a neat row. Machines beeped to life, colored buttons flashing out at Mel in activity and waiting to be tampered with. Upon further inspection, the machines were, in fact, tubes. They weren't much unlike the new Aperture elevators, with thick glass at the center and hulking, metal ends with bottom keypads. Mel could only describe what they were from a film she had seen in the theaters. Testing tubes built by a mad scientists with messy white hair and a lab coat made for creating mutant experiments. The thought would have been laughable, had the machines been empty.

They weren't.

Mel approached the tube nearest to her with a hand to her mouth as it slowly dropped agape at the figure silent and asleep on the inside. A human being. More specifically, a very tall man with receding blonde-red hair in a gray and black jumpsuit with the words 'Intelligence Dampening 65-P' written with a black marker at the top of the glass. Each machine hosted a different human inside, and none were conscious. Mel wasn't even entirely sure they were alive. The man she had been staring at didn't seem to be breathing at all. The woman felt her stomach tighten, absolutely disturbed by what she was seeing and immediately turned to leave, stumbling out the door and slamming it behind, having to use all of her weight to pull it forward with how heavy it had been. Mel dropped to the ground, her hand clutching her mouth and staring at her knees while her breathing spun out of control into hyperventilation.

This place...this horrid place was madness! Those were bodies in jars kept stashed underneath the facility like one would keep storage. Mel felt sick enough to vomit at the very idea, which may have been why her hand refused to leave her lips. Her heart raced as if she had been running for miles, a marathon of disturbed thoughts swimming inside of her. All through the facility she had heard hints dropped of the horrible treatment humans had gone through, but had never taken too much of it to mind until now. Even the mantis-men rumor she had found amusement in the simple notion that she did not believe it to be true. She wondered if they were simply in cryosleep and that she had a way of waking them. If anything, they deserved to be buried, but she had no knowledge of how to open the machines.

Was this the future? Were other places on earth influenced by Aperture? She missed a life of growing old with people she knew to be pushed forward to this hell. She wasn't sure if she would have rather watched it happen or if jumping there painlessly was the better option.

Static crackled from above her, fizzing like her radio back home and a voice reached out to the vastness.

_“H-hello? Is this thing on...?”_


	6. Chapter 6

“Mel? Can you he-ar me?”

Mel felt the weight of this upside-down world lift from her shoulders. At the sound of Virgil's voice over the intercom, she shot up and nodded furiously in case his camera was too far away to properly see her more subtle movements. She found herself smiling, despite everything. He was alive. All else that had happened was mute in comparison.

However, something was clearly wrong. Virgil spoke up again to her response, but his speech was slurred and he sounded incredibly tired. Mel couldn't place whether the glitching tremor in his speech she had picked up on was his own voice or if the intercom was failing.

_“Great...Tha-ank goodness you're okay. Go-ood job getting down here...I'm going to be honest, I actually don't know where I am right now. If I describe it to you, do you thi-ink you'll be able to track me down?”_

Mel's face had dropped in concern, but she nodded again. He sounded so strained.

_“Its dark. Everywhere is dark, but this is unusually dark. There's no lights. Its da-amp and closed off...I think there's an opening right above me but I can't turn ov-ver to see it. Its a narrow space, I actually ricocheted a few times falling through. I think I'm lying on something painted with conversion gel so I'm guessing that will come in handy somehow. That's all I got...”_

Mel tried to lip something simple to him, but the attempt had been in vain.

_“Sorry, didn't...didn't catch that...turn to your right a little...okay, stop right there. Try that again.”_

R-U-O-K-?

This time around she traced out her message with her fingers along with the lip reading for extra emphasis, even drawing out the question mark.

_“Um...I've been better. Thinking I bro-oke a few parts...damage percent-t is at 45. Could be worse, it was already at 23. Wasn't one of my more intelligent moments.”_

She wholeheartedly agreed and shook her head in disapproval of his recklessness.

_“Panicked there, sorry. In any case, I'm not going any-ywhere so you can just...take your time, I guess. I meant to ask, though. Did you actually open that door to your left? Because I have been trying to get in there for quite some time. That vaul-lt houses some of Aperture's most valuable projects.”_

The look of disgust was clear across Mel's face, Virgil realizing that she had been in there and what he was saying out of context may have sounded horrid to her.

_“Ah, no! Wa-ait! They aren't what you think. They're not human. They don't even have any o-organs. Tell you what. Come find me and we can investigate toge-ether. This might prove useful to your escape.”_

What did he mean by they weren't human? Mel wondered if they could have been just very convincing mannequins, but if that was the case then what would they need them for. She was in no way able to question the core, and more important matters were at hand anyway. Bushing her red bangs from her face, she kept her hand to her brow as she searched for what Virgil could have possibly been in. It sounded like he had fallen into some of the wreckage, or a large pipe of some kind. In the far distance, faded in vapors, was a tilting black structure like a fallen tower. It seemed like it may have been far out of reach then where she had calculated Virgil to land, but it was worth a shot and Mel hiked her way towards it.

Closing in on the giant, leaning cylinder, Mel stopped up briefly by a tall gated fence, getting a portal up on the wall beside it and finding a collapsed, upside-down catwalk that looked....relatively safe. To be sure, she put one leg through the portal and kicked the mesh, testing its durability. When it didn't go crashing into the flaming rock surface bellow it, she hopped out and tight-roped her way across the top, trying her hardest not to cough from the rising smoke. She was ready to step over a pile of garbage in her way, observing a white wall hung astray by a mechanical arm above her objective, when a red optic stared up at her from the scraps and shined a laser in her eyes.

“Hey! How's it going?”

Mel breathed in a sharp gasp, scared completely out of her wits by the defective turret that spoke from under her and sent her falling off the walk, kicking the robot down with her in the panic. If she couldn't scream, the defective turret was certainly doing enough of it for her. The flames were coming at them fast, Mel observing in the fraction of a second a white surface beneath the burning junk and dropping a portal down through the embers. Spinning her weight to one side so that she was on her back, Mel shot in the general direction of the wall she had been eyeing earlier. One of three things would happen next.

1: Mel missed and would wind up right back where she had started.

2: Mel moved the wrong portal and she was about to be engulfed in flames with a possible broken spinal cord.

3: Mel landed her mark and the right portal got the wall she had been aiming for, sending her, the defective turret, and a bunch of hot metal parts still on fire tumbling down into the giant, steel pipe to land in a scattered heap at the bottom. Miraculously, that is exactly what happened.

Mel lay at the bottom of the great cylinder curled into a ball, dragging air in through her teeth and holding her sides to stop the aching she felt. The parts that had come in with her had been extinguished of fire on their trip down, Mel opening one eye to shoot a glance at the portal far above them, the orange ring surrounded by flames.

“Ow!”

The woman let both eyes snap open when one of the scraps smacked up against something metal and it protested. Certainly hadn't been the defective turret, for he was already rambling on in the back about how much of a thrill the drop had been. Mel craned her neck up a ways, coming eyes to single, glowing gold eye with a brown, mechanical ball.

“You really know how to make an entra-ance, don't you? The fire was unnecessary, in-n case you were wondering.”

“Aaaaaaw yeah, man! Lets go again! I've never felt so alive!”

Ignoring the noisy defective turret, Mel rolled over to her knees so that she sat up, taking Virgil carefully in her hands and picking him out of the filth. She smiled in relief to see him, but then quickly remembering why she had to pull the stunt in the first place to retrieve him and was good and ready to give him a decent shaking. However, upon picking the core up she could see why he had sounded so run down over the intercom. He was scratched up more then usual and dented along his shell. His upper handlebar hung loose by its right screw and sparks flew out around the sides of his optic if he moved it too much. Upon seeing Mel's face fall, Virgil spun his optic at her.

“It looks-s worse than it actually is. The worst of it is ju-ust my voice byte simulator. Everything else is an easy fix.” Mel could see now that the stuttering and clipping that had been done over the intercom had indeed been Virgil and not the speakers. She brushed her hand over him carefully, getting rid of the muck and filth he collected after lying there for several hours. After inhaling and letting out a large puff of hair, she smiled despite his condition. He was working, at least. The silent woman could do no more than focus on her next task, which was inspecting a way to get the two of them out of the bottom of the this wide tube. The surface beneath them was, indeed, splashed with the white moon conversion gel, but if she were to use it with the orange portal where it was then they would fall right back in. If she were to keep the blue portal then they would walk straight into fire. Mel placed Virgil beside the defective turret laying on its side, patting the core fondly before picking her portal gun up and looking around the confined space for a way out.

The defective turret turned its laser on Virgil, who had been trying his best to ignore its presence until it laughed at him bitterly.

“Ahahahaha! You look like crap!”

Virgil's optic twitched irritably, sparks flying from it into the air.

“Drittsekk.”

Mel huffed. Surely she had been in tougher situations than this one, but with only two options for portals, and both of them being terrible ones, she was struggling to find something that didn't include her trying to shimmy her way up the side of the tube. That wouldn't go well for anyone either. Turning her eyes from the high opening, she looked for her solution among her own level. A was a corner in the steel platting of the structure that had been bent inwards so that a sliver of the outside could be seen, letting in a string of dim light. Mel bent down, peering through to the other side and seeing a white wall about a football field's length away from their prison.

Pulling away from the peep hole, Mel searched the ground, setting aside her portal device and picking up a long shaft of rusted metal. Jamming one end into the opening, she placed her boot on the flat and pushed her weight into it, the corner of the steel plate giving in slowly. She just needed it down far enough she could shoot a portal through the hole. Virgil perked up at her efforts, watching with a spark of admiration. “Smart Aleck! Making the rest of us look like chumps over here!”

Mel got the corner bent enough, blasting her blue portal to the conversion gel wall across the junkyard from them. Picking Virgil up from his seat she moved her orange portal beneath them. Virgil yelped from lack of portal jumping experience, the two landing on a cement walkway running along a wall lined with heavy metal doors and tagged up with spray paint numbers.

“Hey! Hey! What about me? Don't leave me in here!”

Mel straightened up, checking the portal again by leaning forward and her head coming out through the floor of their previous jail break. She grabbed for the defective turret with her device, Virgil still cradled safely between her free arm and her hip. She placed the turret on the cement on the other side, and this time so that he was standing upwards.

“Ah yeah, thank you! This is much nicer!”

“Tch.” Virgil chided from under Mel's arm, though he didn't fault her for wanting to help the broken turret. “Okay, Mel. A word, please?” The woman nodded, sitting cross-legged on the cement and putting her portal device down so that she could hold him with two hands, most of his weight rested between her knees with his eye facing up at her. “Out of curiosity, do you have any experience with mechanics? More specifically, have you ever fixed or help build a car?”

Mel shook her head.

“Right, I didn't think so. Its especially a problem because the car we're going to be hijacking is a more updated version than-n-n what you're used to. Plus, we'll probably need to build the engine from the ground up. There's no wa-ay we'll find one running right. Not that I don't trust your abilities, especially after that circus show you-u just pulled in the pipe, but I think this will be a little too technical for me to guide you through it. I'm going to have to do it on my own. Which is whyyyyy we need to get to that door you found.”

Virgil watched as Mel bit her lip, looking up in the direction of the chamber, just barely being able to see it from where they were sitting.

“You don't want to go back in there, I get it. You're spooked-d-d. But trust me, its not as bad as you think. Lets get going. I need to get this tracking device off me. P-body and A-Atlas can still follow us down here.

Mel took in a breath and nodded, picking her portal gun up and getting to her feet with the core tucked under her free arm.

 

\---------

 

2056

Mel stepped into the vault after being granted access once again, Virgil's eye rolling up in annoyance. “Come oooonnnn! That was it the whole time? Its been starring me right in the face, too! I have been trying to find ways to hack that lock for years.” He looked up at Mel, the woman staring at the figures in the chambers and Virgil making his best attempt to nudge her with his bottom handlebar. “Hey, they aren't real. Well I mean, they are real but they aren't alive in the sense that you think. They're androids. To put it simply, they are robots that look like people. They don't have vital organs, or real hair or any of that. They were synthetically designed to appeal as normal humans do but with mechanical functions.”

The woman felt a weight lift off her shoulders and she mouthed a long, drawn out 'Oooooh' as she took another sweeping glance around the room. Well they certainly had done a bang up job of it. Had Virgil not said anything she would have gone on believing them to be human without so much as a suspicion. They looked so incredibly organic. Mel went to a giant computer monitor at the back wall, placing Virgil on a cushioned swivel chair and taking her portal gun off to rest on the console. She shook her head at him, pointing around the room at the different casings. 'Why?'

“Well, they were made for cores, actually. Core Dependent Assist Droids. It used to be that they tried to make human looking androids for the work place so they didn't have to hire as many cubicle hamsters or grease monkeys. Y'know, more expendable employees like secretaries or book keepers or mechanics. Anyone that wasn't a scientist. The original androids didn't look as natural as these did, and they didn't really act human either. They just acted like computers, and they were really starting to freak the other employees out. They scrapped those and tried again, creating new software that allowed them to put personality cores in control of the shells and setting higher standards for the designs so they wouldn't make anyone uncomfortable. They made one for just about every core in the facility, hoping to transfer all of them over permanently at some point, but the first few they took for a test run were a little...um....defiant. So, with no other use for them for the time being and not wanting Black Mesa to find out about them, a few of the scientists stored the androids down here. They ALMOST made it onto the Borealis. The scientists wouldn't take a crack at robots with limbs again for a while, until they made the testing droids. Even then they cut back on making them look anything resembling a human.”

Mel nodded, taking from her pocket her pink sticky-notes and started writing, though her hands were getting shaky from lack of nutrition. She held it up for her core friend. “What about you?”

“Mine should be in here, actually! I was the first test run, so my model is a little older than the others. Uh, I wasn't one of the difficult ones, though. At the time I was one of the few examples that put their head down and did their work. Look for a chamber that has 'Maintenance 22-A' written on it.”

Crumbling up her note and tossing it to the side, Mel turned and walked down the line of chambers, taking her time and going slowly to read each one. The diversity in the designs was something to be impressed with, droids ranging from every size, shape, color, age, and gender. The one thing she did notice, though, that while the letters behind the number system seemed random, the higher the numbers were the newer the droids looked. She could start to see signs of artificial manufacturing, some of the older droids having a less seamless design with joints, screws, and even some torn skin to reveal metal plating underneath. Mel cringed away, still put off by the clash between human and machine.

Finally, she found the model Virgil advised her to look for. Maintenance 22-A was scribbled on the chamber of a droid about 5'8, with messy brown hair and a flower vested jumpsuit to match the rim around Virgil's optic. It was one of the older examples she had seen, with seams split down along the cheeks and tears in the dark red and black-sleeved air-fighter jacket worn over its jumpsuit. A pair if goggles sat alone on a keyboard outside of the chamber, Mel picking them up and waving them in Virgil's direction. The core shouted at her from the other end of the room.

“Yup! That's mine! Come tur-rn this computer on and lets get me plugged in! The sooner I get this chip out the better!”

Mel placed the goggles back on the keyboard, retrieving Virgil and helping him turn the main computer on and walking over to the chamber to await further instructions.

“See the port right there on the machine beside the cha-amber? Just turn me around and plug me into it. I'll be able to do the res-st. This might take a while so just sit tight until I'm done converting over. Okay?”

She nodded. The woman searched for the port, finding it just behind the keyboard the goggles had been resting on and holding Virgil above it. A magnet pulled the core out of her grip and onto the port, doing the rest of the work and fastening him in place. Virgil hummed to himself thoughtfully, his optic wandering around the room before it suddenly straightened out and spun in place. Mel never liked it when he did that. It made him look more machine than he already was, but this time he didn't switch back. Instead the optic spun faster, a whir coming from inside of his hull and sparks crackling out from the damage he had taken earlier. She wondered if she should pull him out, biting her lip in concern and reaching for him hesitantly, only to retrieve her hand back when his optic snapped shut and everything went quiet. The chamber could be heard booting up with a hiss, the blue light above the droid's head pulsing.

Mel stepped back, crossing her hands to her upper arms and massaging them anxiously as she watched and waited. There was no other action from the machine, other than the constant pulsing. She had to trust that Virgil knew what he was doing and if there was a chance he couldn't pull through with this in his condition, then he wouldn't have suggested it. After a while, the silence crept back to Mel and she walked away from the chamber with the notion that nothing else would happen for the time being and that she would just have to wait it out. She approached the large computer at the end of the room, taking a seat in the swivel chair, using her foot to push it and spin her around 360 two or three times.

Coming to a stop, Mel held her stomach as it churned unhappily. They had no time to search for food in the hours they were running from GLaDOS and her grunts, but now that things had settled down the feeling of hunger was growing harder to ignore. Mel decided to occupy her time with several different things. Napping was out of the question, for she felt that she needed to monitor Virgil's conversion in case something went wrong. She drew on the sticky-notes, doodling various generic things like flowers, animals, and houses without putting much effort into any of them and sticking them to the side of the console when she was done. Best save the rest for talking, since it was the only voice she had. Pacing around the room. That was done for a bit until she decided conserving her energy was the best thing for her and the less activity the better. So there was nothing to do but sit and wait.

Mel sat in the swivel chair backwards with her arms propped on the top of its back rest and her chin placed above her arm. Blowing a lock of hair out of her face, she had grown from worry to boredom over the course of two hours. It was funny how given a sudden surge of activity after six months of sitting around a barn could suddenly fling you right back into a fog after it all settled. Mel glanced at the computer monitor, seeing several different files and one of them listed under the title 'aprtr_vlntr_pfl.vx', and it was subtly flashing in unison with the chamber had been Virgil loading himself into. Wondering if it may have been a window into his progress, Mel searched for one of the oval objects that was used to move the arrow on the screen. Mouse, was it? When she found it, she certainly did agree it looked a little like a mouse with a long tail. It just needed ears.

Moving it across the monitor, she clicked on the file, opening up several different windows that spread out along the screen, filling the orange desktop with black text among white sheets. There were faces, as well. Each document had a photo beside it of a person, most of them in nice suits with the occasional white lab coat. Mel reasoned them to be the different scientists on the project, until she caught a glimpse of one photo in particular on top of the window pile. It was the face of the first android she had encountered upon entering the vault, only in a nice white oxford,blue tie, glasses, and his hair combed back.

\---

_-Intelligence Dampening 65.P_

_-Pendleton, Wheatley S._

_-Bristol, England_

_-Age//37 Caucasian -Blue eyes, strawberry-red hair_

_-Occupation//book keeper_

_-Dismissed//misplaced $5,000 between clients._

_-Surgery//4 hours. Tranquilizers//yes. Unresponsive. Conversion up to 1 hour. Recovery//deceased._

_Intelligence Dampening Sphere tested with Genetic Lifeform and Disc Operating System. Compatibility at a steeped 3%. Influenced Central Core to nearly blow itself up. Rejected after one hour. Under NO CIRCUMSTANCES is Wheatley ready for Core Dependent Assist Droid 65-P compatibility._

\---

Mel shook her head, dumbfounded. This spoke of the android as if it were a person at one point. No, it spoke as if the core it was built for had been a person. There was an age, country origin, a job. Her eyes traced their way up to a search option, holding her breath as she scrolled to it and typed in 'Maintenance 22.A.' Almost instantly, a separate window replaced the one with the previous core with a similar profile. Mel sat back in her chair, a picture of the android Virgil was loading into on the photo sheet. Or, they looked remarkably alike. The photo was that of an identical man, minus two seams on the cheeks and his brown hair was pulled back into a ponytail. He had green eyes and was wearing a plain black button up with the sleeves rolled up his arms.

\---

_-Maintenance Sphere 22.A_

_-Aadland, Virgil S._

_-Oslo, Norway_

_-Age//35 Caucasian -Green eyes, brown hair_

_-Occupation//Mechanic_

_-Dismissed//Work environment demands_

_-Surgery//6 hours. Tranquilizers//no. Responsive. Conversion up to 2 hours. Recovery//deceased._

_Maintenance Sphere tested with Genetic Lifeform and Disc Operating System. Compatibility at a high 85%. Rejected after four months. Started gaining sentience of its own and arguing with Central Core on how to do its job right. Virgil is ready for Core Dependent Assist Droid 22-A compatibility._

 

\---

Mel cupped her hands over her mouth, leaning forward so her elbows were on the console and starting up at the files with wide, disturbed blue eyes. She couldn't quite get a grip on what this all meant, and a lot of it was very vague, but one thing was becoming very clear to her. The cores she had seen may have been human at one point. Maybe these androids had been modeled off of the people the cores used to be. This was all speculation, of course, and Mel didn't have another moment to worry herself over it. The active chamber started humming, Mel closing out the file quickly and running over to investigate.

Virgil, or the core Virgil, was still powered down. The human-like-machine inside abruptly opened its eyes and the metal plating in the center of its chest flew open to reveal an amber shining optic just like the one fastened in the original core. The droid’s eyes shone the same brilliant gold, and when they moved the optic built into the chest followed them. It caught sight of Mel, and when I turned to her she could now truly see that these were not human. There was something subtly mechanical about the way he moved, and one of the eyes looked like it was busted. As apposed to the left eye, which was perfectly white like an eyeball should be, the left held the same yellow glowing iris but the eye itself was black with pinstripes of electric yellow moving in an upwards line like a busted computer monitor. Mel could feel it studying her, the droid raising its arm and pointing to the console where Virgil's core sat asleep.

“Mel! See that red button to the left? That opens the glass!” Even with his voice muffled and needing to shout to be heard, it belonged to Virgil. Mel knew that she was staring, unable to take her eyes away and her legs refusing to move, but she couldn't help it. It wasn't until she could feel her chest pounding that she realized she may have been frightened of him. It took the android speaking up a second time and waving his hand in front of Mel's face to snap her out of it. “Helllloooo! Aperture to Mel! I'm stuck!”

Without thinking about it, Mel jumped to attention and pushed the red button, standing back as the glass to the chamber lifted and the smell of chemicals poured out from the opening spaces, irritating Mel's lungs and making her cough into a hand. The robot was shaky trying to get out, gripping the sides of the chamber tightly and slowly lowering himself out and onto sturdy ground. Even then he needed to be leaning against the console as to not fall. After some bravery, he let go and started moving his limbs about, getting his balance and testing the joints like he would do with his handlebars after sleep mode. Putting a hand to his upper arm, he lifted it and started rolling that shoulder, and then doing the same to the opposite.

“That felt WEIRD! This feels weird. It has been ages since I used this thing! I've been trying to break into this vault to get this vehicle back so I can search for parts easier. It just doesn't work when you have no arms and can't carry everything you want back. Or legs for that matter.” He stopped stretching for a moment, always aware of Mel's expressions since she had no verbal way of speaking them. She seemed to be spooked still, and he frowned at her. “Hey, you okay? You're looking a little pale.”

Mel's eyes made her way from his boots to the messy head of brown hair. He was only a little taller then she was. Talked like Virgil? Yes. Acted like Virgil? Sure. The concept was still hard to wrap her head around and she pointed to him and lipped her question. 'Virgil?'

To his, the robot was able to roll both its eyes and even formed a grimace. “We went over this. My data is just loaded into a different hard drive. Look, give me your sticky notes and pencil.” He held a hand out for her, gesturing his fingers impatiently and waiting for Mel to dig them out of her pocket. Once they were in his possession, Virgil tested his hand functions by making a few scribbles first, and then began to write. When he was done, he took the sticky not and reached out to paste the adhesive to Mel's forehead. Mel crossed her eyes up at it in surprise, taking the note from her forehead. After reading the short note, Mel's shoulders shook with her version of voiceless laughter. He had done it. She was convinced and had nothing to worry about.

_Hello, Mel! :)_

 

\------------

 

**{Virgil Assist Droid: Art by faragonart.tumblr.com}**

**http://66.media.tumblr.com/d0c17399ec4249325703e2753493240a/tumblr_inline_o8sjtlkcXz1r9cup3_500.png**


	7. Chapter 7

What tiny, pathetic, useless things. To a human, Atlas and P-body were very large for robots, with the blue testing droid being wider than most humans and his orange companion being taller than most. From GLaDOS' point of view, they were microscopic. Small, insignificant pests that only ever did one thing right, and even then they were very flawed in the execution of their testing. The white lady core towered over them, the droids shaking where they stood, for they knew all too well that she was not happy with their recent 'test' to retrieve the woman and the personality core back.

**_“I've lost the signal I planted inside the maintenance core. They managed to make it all the way down to old Aperture where I cannot reach them. Would you mind telling me why that is? Either of you? Orange?”_ **

P-Body jumped at her name being mentioned, blinking rapidly and then twitching to the right to cower behind Atlas, who narrowed his optic and put up fisticuffs at GLaDOS in response to her distress.

**_“I see. I'll call you when its time to start testing again, since that is all you two are good for.”_ **

Without so much as a warning, Atlas and P-Body combusted into flames, their parts exploding into different directions and scattering across her chamber floor. The more time passed that those two were loose, the more aggravated GLaDOS became, but she knew that her limits reached to only new Aperture. Either she wait for them to come up on their own, which she doubted would happen, or she found a way to scare them out. To drown them out of their hole in the ground.

The central core remembered what she had found from the security feeds before she had awoken. This human...Mel...She had stopped AEGIS from flooding the facility, indirectly saving GLaDOS from drowning in a successful attempt to save her own hide. Personally, GLaDOS was always partial to toxic gases over liquids...

But this would have to do.

 

\---------

 

_CRACK!_

Virgil stomped his boot down on the chip he'd thrown to the floor after carefully uninstalling it from his old shell, the tracking device snapping into pieces. He twisted his shoe around to make extra sure that the thing was thoroughly demolished and pointing to it angrily. “Take THAT you old hag! Putting a bug on me? All high and mighty up in that central core, right? If I could spit--!”

Mel's shoulders shook and she grinned from where she was sitting in the swivel chair backwards again, arms wrapped around the back as she watched her friend break the chip. Now, hopefully, Atlas and P-body would have a lower chance of tracking them down in this pit, if at all. Virgil slapped his hands together as if to rid them of dirt, turning to Mel just as she was gesturing over to his core body. “Hm? Oh, that? We can store that here for now for safe keeping. Its probably hard for you to believe, but I actually feel more comfortable in there. I'd like to return to it at some point. Besides, this body doesn't come with wifi so I'll be going blind for a little while.” He carefully lifted the damaged personality core shell from the console and placed it inside the chamber the humanoid robot body had previously been in, closing the glass with the press of a button to take extra care that it remained unharmed.

The personality core, or android as it were, reached for the goggles he had left on the keypad and fastened them to his head, flattening out some of his wild hair. “Will be needing these. So, Mel? Shall we hit the road once more? I hear Aperture Innovators is pretty nice this time of year!”

Mel nodded, letting the chair wheel away as she moved from its seat and headed out of the vault with Virgil. She was the last one out, turning to glance around the room at the droids one last time. She looked at the face of the tall one at the beginning of the line, remembering the name from the files. Wheatley S. Pendleton. Who had he been? What had really happened here?

Virgil S. Aadland...should she ask if he knew?

“Hey? Need help closing the door?” Virgil called from behind her, Mel snapping out of her thoughts to nod. It had been a strain the last time she pulled it shut, and had done it so quickly she nearly tore her arm out of its socket. The two gripped the handle and pulled, the latch beeping shut and locking until the password was used once again. “Further down we go, then! I'll apologize ahead of time if I'm a little slow. Still working these legs out.”

Mel smiled at him, giving Virgil a fond pat on the shoulder as she passed him by. It seemed that she would be leading the way this time with Virgil's 'wifi' on hold. She meant to ask what that all meant at some point, but for now they had a mission on their hands.

The vastness of Aperture Science Laboratories, whether new or old, could only be truly appreciated when on foot. The shafts, and lifts, and even the portal gun that cut the walking time in half dulled the measurement of just how much time could be spent in one area of the facility. Virgil had always had his shortcuts, or monitored things from another source, and he found himself looking around the towering wreckage as if it had been his first time. Also, he was getting bored with walking already. “If I could be exhaust-ed this would he exhaust-ing. This is actually taking forever. How do you manage? I get the whole Olympian thing, I do, but holy smokes this has been a hike! What? We're climbing down there now, is that it?”

Mel raised an eyebrow at him from where she was starting to scale down a pipe, jumping the rest of the way until she landed on a metal platform and offering Virgil a hand. He shook his head and started to carefully scoot his way down. “No thanks, I got it! I should probably practice anyway. Its not like this is the hardest thing I've done today...Umph!” He jumped down, shaking the metal platform and Mel quickly reaching out to steady herself on a cement wall before shooting him a glare.

“What? I did the exact same thing you did!”

Mel approached him, lifting the hand free of her portal gun and placing it to his chest just above the creepy third-eye optic. She made the gesture to shove him, and though she had put some muscle into it he barely budged. That's right, he was made of mostly metal. Though he let her shove him, Virgil scowled at Mel in confusion. “What did you do that for?”

His response got Mel reaching for her notes and scribbling something down, holding the piece of paper up for him to see.

_You're heavy._

“Rude.”

_Just be more careful._

“Alright! Alright! I get the hint. I'll try to not to fling my weight around too much.”

Thankfully the testing spheres weren't a ridiculously long ways down from where they were. Mel found a tower of offices nestled between two rocky ledges of the mine that had a lift to take them all the way to the bottom. Virgil made sure to stand in the center of the ancient lift so that he didn't tilt it too far to one side while going down. The sight of the first testing sphere was a relief all its own, but Mel remembered that going from point A to point B down here was near impossible. They would have to take at least one set of the spheres down if they wanted to reach where her cryo-chamber had been.

Virgil looked over the ledge of one of the spheres, blinking broadly and dumbfounded at the testing track they were about to enter. If he had been built to swallow he would have. “We're really doing this, huh?”

Mel shrugged, but had been smiling. She had already done these tests the first time they met and he was still pretending to be Cave Johnson, of all people. He might have pulled it off better if his accent wasn't as thick. Needless to say, she was confident about getting through them, already knowing the answers to each one. Virgil should have as well, but there was a huge difference between monitoring the testing subject and being the testing subject. Virgil could hear Mel writing something behind him, and he turned around.

_Don't be nervous. Are you authorized?_

“Yeah, these were built to go through emancipation grills. They're made with the same materials as the newer portal guns.”

_Then there's nothing to worry about. Just follow my lead._

Mel shot a portal to the lower level bellow them, finding another on a wall higher up and placing the other side to where it was facing towards a ledge they could not have normally jumped to. Virgil still seemed a little hesitant to jump down, even after Mel had motioned for him to go first. Eventually, Mel merely lifted her boot and pushed him from behind, the android falling through the portal and flying out the other side with a scream, landing in a heap on the ledge she had been aiming for. Had he been human, that would have broken a few bones. Human he was not, however, and remained unscathed. His pride, on the other hand, had been knocked down a notch. “Oooow...” Peeling himself from the white floor, he sat cross-legged and cupped his hands to yell back at her. “Yes, very nice of you! Super classy! I kicked a friend off of a ledge once, too! It was oodles of fun! Didn't we just make the agreement that I wouldn't be throwing my myself around? This seems a little counter-productive to that plan!”

Mel couldn't help but laugh, motioning him to move aside as she jumped. Virgil made a surprised noise and quickly scrambled way from the portal's throwing range, Mel coming to land on the ledge with practiced grace. Virgil, who insisted on sitting even after he moved, applauded her from the side. “The Olympian at her finest, lady's and gentlemen! Okay, I think I've got it out of my system and I'm ready for the next jump!” Virgil hopped to his feet, his hand finding the button beside him on a podium and Mel grabbing for the retro Aperture cube that fell out at its command. This wasn't a duel testing track, and maybe that was a good thing. He didn't have his own portal device and, to be quite frank, they could easily cheat this way and get through these faster.

Coming to the very end of the testing track, Virgil had grown accustomed to the portals and had even asked Mel for her gun on several occasions to help with puzzles. Once his nervousness was gone, he was able to clear his head and remember the formula that was built towards the resolution. They came out of the elevator at the final test, Virgil almost disappointed that they weren't doing any others and shoved a hand through his polyester hair with the simulated sensation similar to adrenaline running through his head. “Okay but did you see me on that last one when I jumped out of the air to catch that cube?! That was amazing, right?

Mel nodded, forcing a smile for the excitable assist droid. It wasn't that she was not proud of his achievements, or happy that he had a good time. If she could, she would have been excited with him, but the test had been some of the final straws on what little she had left of any energy. Sleep could only take you so far, and she had been working off that last can of beans she ate...who knew how long ago at this point. There was no way to tell what the time was underground unless they found a working clock. Heaven knew that wasn't happening down this far.

They had finally reached the offices where Mel had been put on ice all that time ago, and it looked worse than when they had last visited. Again, the place had been under toxic waste for a brief period of time, and though it had mostly dried up there were still puddles of the nasty liquid lying about in nooks and crevices. There was a dead, indoor park area that lead into a parking lot beside the office buildings. Bare trees and flattened, browned bushes scattered the floor, along with deadly pools of toxic waste that had once been dry but recently filled back. Broken gas lamps traveled along their path to the parking lot where there was a giant, vaulted door. Virgil approached the large metal gate and put a hand to it.

“We'll need to get this open. There should be some cars on the other side, and a tunnel road that will take you miles from here and eventually level up to the surface. All we have to do is boot up a car, fill it with supplies, and then you can drive it out of here without ever looking back! NOW! We need to look for the switch that opens this thing! We'll have to search around inside for a button and hope that it didn't get damaged by the goo.”

Mel saluted sarcastically, but all in good fun. It wasn't like she could bark orders, so someone else might as well. Only Virgil could also help, now. It took a while of tearing through the office spaces. Looking under desks, along walls, and pushing various buttons that did absolutely nothing. Had they once been the trigger for the door and had busted, they would never know. Mel made her way into a side room of gray cement where a few 50s turrets were knocked around the room and no longer functioning. They were awake the last time Mel had come through here, so she could only guess it had been the flooding and bit her lip when she realized that had almost happened to her, as well as Virgil. There was a switch on the wall nearest to the entrance, and she gave it a good yank, the lights above them flickering and the sound of something heavy being lifted. She could hear Virgil at the end of the room over shouting out at her.

“Hey, that was you, right? Whatever you did, the door's open!”

Mel smiled, but as she was turning to leave she reached for the wall the switch had been on and caught herself in a bout of dizziness. She kept telling herself that they were almost done and to just hang in there. Wiping a cold sweat from her forehead, she marched out past the office building, the goo having swept away the debris that had once blocked the door outside. Wasn't much of a door anymore. More like a great gaping hole in the glass. She found Virgil already investigating the opened gate with his hands to his hips. It was pitch black on the other side of the door, with small, square lights leading up a road that turned out of sight after a few yards. To the side of the road on either side of the tunnel walls were more parking spaces with only one, single, tiny car left. Virgil took one look at the thing and groaned.

“A Gremlin? Really? Of all the cars that could have been here, lady luck had to go and give me an AMC Gremlin? What kind of a sick joke is this? How is this thing even still standing?”

Mel walked in with Virgil to get a closer look, and it certainly was much stranger than the ones she was used to. Not as sleek or stylish, but maybe that was because it banged up. Even if she wasn't familiar with brand, or cars in general, she could tell it was in really bad shape. Mel took a note.

_Can you fix it?_

“I'm gonna have to.” Virgil put a hand through his hair and tussled it as he tried to calm down, walking around the car until he came to the engine hood. He lifted a boot and kicked the front, the top popping up and Virgil's head disappearing as he inspected the engine underneath. Thankfully, it seemed that not one ounce of goo had made its way past the vaulted doors. They were made air-tight. “Good news! Its not as bad as it seems. The engine is actually in pretty good condition. I don't have to do a whole lot with that, but we need fuel and we need new tires...and the windows have to be cleaned. There's a workshop in the basement that might have what we need. I can go get those, but would you be able to stay here and clean this glass off?

Mel leaned into the window of the small car, stretching herself out and grabbing hold of an old rag that had been lying on the seat. Pulling it out and leaving her portal gun on the seat in its place, she gave Virgil a thumb's up.

“Great! Be back in a little bit!”

She watched Virgil disappear back into the broken office. Once he had gone she turned to look for a source of water, finding a drip coming out of the rocks and wondering if it was corrosive or if it was regular water. Either way, it most likely wouldn't be good for drinking, even if it was just water. The dripping smelled fine. If it had been goo she would have been able to tell just from that trait alone. Wetting the rag, she hustled her way back to the car got to working on the windshield. Dust had caked itself onto the surface of the glass so bad she thought she was going to crack the window trying to scrub it off, but it left the driver absolutely blind so it had to be done.

Mel had almost finished with the window when the dizziness returned and she stopped to grip her head. Losing control of her body, and her vision fading to black, Mel dropped to the ground. Her head caught on her arm, luckily shielding her skull from hitting the cement ground, but the last thought in her mind before she was unconscious was how cold and damp her forehead felt against her arm. After that, everything was black and everything was silent.

Virgil had made out in the workshop, and thinking this the luckiest break they had since Mel arrived. He had found not only almost an entire gallon of gas, but tires that would fit the car. Or they fit the car enough, at least. All very convenient, he thought to himself, but he expected it was just compensation for all the bonkers events that had happened in the past couple of days. He could only carry the gasoline back, for the time being, as well as some tools he had pulled together in his search. The tires would take at least two trips to bring back if Mel helped him.

“More good news!” Virgil hollered as he stepped through the broken glass. “I have found your salvation! Gas! And a monkey wrench...but mainly gas and tires!” He turned the corner to where he left Mel last to clean the windows, only for his eyes to search lower for her than he had expected. The human was lying in a heap on the ground and completely motionless. Feeling the painful jolt of what he could only assume was a stray spark in his core, Virgil dropped the red canister of gas and his toolbox to sprint over to her. “Mel!”

Virgil slid to his knees with some noisy clanking against the cement, quickly turning Mel over and propping her up with one arm while he patted urgently at her cheeks with the other. “Mel! Mel, come on! Wake up! What's wrong?! Don't tell me you just fell asleep like this?!” When he didn't get so much as a response, he put an ear to her chest and listened. No, heartbeat was still thumping away so she wasn't dead. What had happened? What did humans need in a situation like this?

Wait...wait wait WAIT! FOOD! He had forgotten to feed her! He had broken Mel! At first he didn't think it was possible for humans to break, but now he knew how! By not feeding them, and now Mel was broken! Cars were a piece of cake. Advanced robotic engineering was even easier. But he couldn't take care of one, single human?!

Virgil put Mel down hastily, but carefully, and raced himself into the office, taking some of the chairs that had been swept onto their sides to sit upright and facing each other before running to retrieve Mel. He struggled with lifting her off the ground, not knowing exactly how to pick a human up in a situation like this, but he had seen photos of grooms holding their brides a certain way so he tried for that as his best option. Once he had that figured out, she was surprisingly light.

No, no that wasn't surprising at all. She was starving.

Good. Job. Virgil.

The android hurried her inside, getting her to lay out along the chairs and making sure she wasn't going to roll off before he did anything else. He rushed deeper into the office space and practically turned the cabinets inside out. He tore through the break room, checking under desks, and kicking over outdated refrigerators that had been lying on the floor. He didn't care what there was, just that it was in a can. That's how it worked, right? Only food that was in a can lasted long enough to be eaten after, what? A century?

“C'mon! C'mon! C'mon! There's got to be something! Anything!”

Well, he'd found a spoon. Good for him. If Mel had food this is what she would eat it with. However, she didn't have food and it was because he wasn't looking hard enough! There was a second break room upstairs, and Virgil practically flew up the steps to get there, almost tripping over his own feet twice in the madness. This break room had a back walk in fridge where there was food storage and stock kept, though employees had to pay if they wanted anything from it. Needless to say, most brought their lunches in from home with the occasional forgetful scientist that was too caught up in his own work to remember what food was. Virgil skidded along the smooth tiles like a character out of the Breakfast Club and almost missed the doorway into the kitchen. Upon flinging the door open, the core found spread around the shelves at least thirty different kinds of canned food and some water bottles. There was soda, as well, but they all seemed to be Aperture brand and he knew he didn't want any part of that. Grabbing some water and the first can nearest to him, without even caring what was inside, he pocketed them in his jacket and sprung out to leave again.

When he'd gotten back to Mel, Virgil checked her heart again just to be sure she didn't...didn't expire while he was gone. Hearing the same heartbeat as before, he sighed in relief and screwed the cap off the bottle of water first. Sitting on his knees, he got an arm behind Mel's shoulders and sat her up, knowing enough that he had to pour the water into her mouth slowly. She was responsive and took to accepting the water, drinking it down and yet still unconscious. Virgil didn't understand how she was able to do it, but he took it as a clear sign to keep at it. Feeding her was out of the question for the time being, so he'd just have to wait until she woke up to try that. Hopefully the water would be enough.

This continued for a long while, Virgil making sure to pace himself so he didn't drown his friend with the water bottle and giving it to her in doses. When the bottle was empty and she still hadn't woken, Virgil picked up another chair and slid it to the side of the makeshift bed he'd gotten set up for her, taking a seat with his fingers dug deep into his doll hair and waited.


	8. Chapter 8

It had been a little over an hour since Mel had passed out. Virgil, who was afraid to leave in case something vital happened, had sat in his seat the whole way through in absolute distress, his foot tapping against the floor rapidly as he watched for any sign of movement. Had he only known that he had put Mel into a similar state when he tossed himself off his management rail. He groaned as he put his head down and held it, his knee still bouncing at rapid fire speed with his foot, cursing his manufacturers for giving him the ability to feel anxiety. It was absolutely killing him! He was so used to talking to himself, he had found he was talking to her quite a lot while she was asleep.

“Come on, Mel. Don't do this to me now. You were almost out. Again! How many test subjects can say they escaped this place once, let alone twice? You'd have set a record. I heard the tenacious subject didn't even make it past the parking lot the first time.”

Virgil looked up when he heard Mel stir, the human lady raising an arm and putting a hand over her eyes to massage her brow. Despite obviously having a headache, the first thing she would hear was Virgil jumping up and hovering over her with a million questions.

“Mel! Oh, thank goodness! Tell me you are not broken or anything like that! Are you okay? Do you need food? Because I have some right here! I even found a spoon!”

The woman cringed away as she sat up, but not too far. She still had to lean against the back of the chair, but Virgil's lack of volume control made her want to lay back down fully. Did he have an off switch by chance? With a hand still over her eyes, she reached her free one out and searched for her friend's head, her fingers finding his face and patting it from the top downward until she found his mouth. She pressed her palm against it. It was a subtle enough hint, and Virgil nodded with embarrassment.

When she took her hand away, he made sure to talk quieter and at a calmer speed. The only time he had left her side while she was out was to go find a can opener, raising the food he had found and popping it open to stick a spoon in the center. “Here, I found you a...wait, what was this again?...A can of pumpkin pie filling...um, not sure what kind of nutrients are in this but it has to be good for something. And there's more where this came from.

Mel's eyes widened at the sight of the can, sitting up again and accepting the pie filling gratefully. Once she had the spoon in her hand, there was nothing stopping her from tackling the contents of the tin can, shoveling it down as if it was her express purpose in life. Nothing very lady like about it, either, and that was not how her mother had raised her. Virgil watched in fascination as the pumpkin disappeared before his eyes, looking absolutely dumbfounded. What an odd thing, eating. Mel could already feel energy being given back to her, the euphoria of her stomach filling up prompting her to sigh in contentment. She was almost done with the can but gave herself a small break to jot something down on her notes for the assist droid.

_Thank you._

“Heh. Don't mention it. I'm sorry, that should have been the first thing we looked for.”

_I'm responsible for myself._

“Right, but you see, I am also responsible for you. So I'm going to take some credit here. Or, we should be responsible for each other, more like. We're in this pit together, so we need each other to climb out of it.”

Mel felt like he had a point, but there was something that concerned her. She had a chance to go free, but what was Virgil to do when she was gone? GLaDOS wanted her for testing, but she would have no real use for Virgil if they were to be caught. It really only chalked up to one very basic, but unfortunate, outcome. Mel was sure that Virgil was more than aware of this and if he wanted to discuss it there was little stopping him. On the other hand, there was something she had been considering. Mel finished her can of spiced pumpkin pie filling, already feeling so much better after even that small amount of food and sitting back to relax in the chair-bed Virgil had put together.

Something had obviously been weighing on her mind. The optic in his chest did serve a special purpose in that it was technically where his 'brain' was. While the droid's eyes saw just as a human would, or close to it anyway, the optic on his chest was what studied statistics for them before processing. Right now they were telling him what her body-language might equate to. “Uh...something wrong or are you just tired still?”

Mel had her hands folded over her stomach, looking up at the ceiling and exhaling deeply. She took her notes out again, scribbling slowly but steadily.

_What if I stayed here?_

“What?!” Virgil sat up, taking the note and bringing it closer so that he was sure he was reading it right, holding it between his eyes as well as switching it down to his optic. Nope, still said what he thought it did. “Mel, you can't be serious! I mean just look at what his place has done to you. You're...you're malfunctioning, is what you are doing! Insane killer robots! Toxic waste! Poisonous gases! Sentry turrets! There is nothing down here for you!”

_There's you._

Virgil froze, staring blankly at the pink paper but internally he felt his mechanics speed up with an audible whir. The other notes she had given him over the course of the past several hours had been tossed aside, save two that she kept for herself. When he took this one from her, however, he read it over in his head a few times and slid it into his jacket pocket. A momento of the nicest thing anyone had ever said to him. Despite feeling genuinely touched, the matter was still upsetting and he stared off to to the floor with a hand gripping his jaw His mind was too busy to really be looking at anything, trying to find the right words to say that could talk her out of this...insanity.

“Mel...I know its been tough out there. You were alone for a long time. I, more than anyone else, knows how that feels. And yeah, if you hadn't been coming back to Aperture for supplies you might not have made it, but eventually the supplies down here will run out and then what?...There is something better out there! You can't give up like this. Not someone who was in the Olympics, for crying out loud. I know my knowledge of humans is pretty limited, but doesn't that count for something? And don't take this the wrong way, but woman weren't exactly welcomed with big open arms into that kind of competition in your time period. How hard did you have to bust your joints to get that far?”

He was right, and Mel knew it. She had felt defeated within writing the first letter of her note. She was just so tired, and not just in the physical sense. So much had happened up to this point and she was coming to the end of her rope. She wondered how she was still sane. She recalled the story of Alice in Wonderland, a favorite book of her's when she was growing up. Alice walked further and further into the rabbit hole, coming to the world of Wonderland made entirely underground. Everywhere Alice went there was something maddening around the corner, and she had always wondered how a girl like herself could stay calm through it all and leave a place as if she had never been. Mel hadn't come out unscathed and everything had changed, now more than ever, and she couldn't go back. Aperture was the only thing familiar.

She nodded to Virgil, giving him a smile and mouthing the word 'thanks' instead of writing them down this time. Instead, since she wasn't yet well enough to be too active, she thought she would ask him about the other concerning matter on her mind while they were talking like this. If she was leaving soon she needed to ask now.

_I found something in the assist droid chamber._

“Oh yeah? What's up?”

_Virgil S. Aadland. Were cores human?_

“...Oh. You found that.” The android pressed his hands together in front of his mouth and out them up to his lips. He needed to tread carefully with this one, because technically that meant he had been bluffing in the chamber when he said that the bodies weren't human. Technically, he was right, but humans weren't very technical now were they? Very emotional, more like, and he didn't want to set her off. “Um...yyyyeeesssss???? And no. A little bit of both, I think.”

_But humans died so they could be made?_

“Yes, that is correct.” He watched as her eyes faded into disappointment and sympathy, and all of it aimed at him. He realized that she must have felt sorry for him and he was planning on correcting that.

“Its complicated. Save your notes, I'll explain. I can only tell you what I've found, so its not like I'm some big expert on what happened, but Cave Johnson was really, really sick and he wanted to put his brain into a computer so he could go on living and run the facility. Chances are he was going to die before any of this happened, so he told his scientists to go ahead and continue with the project...but using the brain of his loyal assistant, Miss Caroline.”

Virgil motioned to a framed painting of a lady with long dark hair that had once been hanging on the wall and now lay on the floor from them a few feet away among the leftover glass shards. A lot of it had been faded and washed, but Mel remembered it well enough from when she first entered the salt mines.

“Before they put her mind into a computer they had to test out the process a few times, though. A lot of them didn't go very well. There were exactly twenty-one humans put through the surgery before they finally got it right. And your looking at him. Serial number VC321XB47. Personality Sphere 01. Maintenance Core 22-A. Virgil. Mouthful of a name, right? I'm the very first successfully functioning core Aperture created. Of course, I actually don't have any recollection of the older days. My memory's gotten a little corrupted over time and I don't think I behaved back then like I do now. All the information I have on the subject have been from files I poked around at on my many trips down here. You might not be surprised to find out that the poor lady that had her mind transferred into data after I was became the Genetic Lifeform and Disc Operating System, or GLaDOS.”

Mel sat up, looking over at the painting once again with her interest peaked. She pointed to 'Miss Caroline' and then to the ceiling, signifying the upper floors of the facility.

“Yup, that's GLaDOS. I don't think she realizes she was human at one point...or maybe she does, I don't know. I just don't think any core that could remember they were human would act that way. I'm the only one that's aware of all of this as far as I know because I'm one of the few cores that goes out of their way to do any snooping.”

_Do you remember being human?_

“Not exactly. All I know about him...about Virgil Aadland, is that he was a mechanic and that the poor bastard was awake during the transfer because they didn't have the money to drug the test subjects up. Like I said, Aperture would get rid of the easily replaceable employees. They just wouldn't get sent home. Either they were put on the testing track or had their thoughts shoved into a memory drive.”

The more he talked about the transfers, the more uncomfortable Mel was, and he was aware of it. Virgil raised his eyebrows at her, trying to remind himself that while this was a casual subject through his point of view, her poor human emotions must have been doing back flips. Running his hand through his hair, again, he grit his teeth. He knew exactly what it was she really wanted to know.

“I get flashes every now and then. A memory I shouldn't have will come up and then its gone in a fraction of a millisecond. I'll begin referring to someone I might have known only to forget who it was I was talking about. I couldn't tell you any of them now, they just come and then are wiped. I only have memories of the incidents rather than the subjects. I'm sure I held onto subconscious mannerisms...like this!” He realized he was messing his hair up again, which explained why it was so unkempt, and then pointed to his own hand.

“See that? Prime example. Probably something he did at one point. When I use the assist droid I can't help doing it. The scientists thought they could be sneaky and model these droids after the employees they offed to get investigators off their backs by saying we were still working here. It worked, of course, because we literally had the best lawyers in the world...huh. I think Fact Core was a layer, actually. Wonder who he pissed off...uh, anyway. Its hard for me to really be upset about this, if you haven't noticed by now. I must be coming off as kind of cold, but I don't really consider myself as...as him, if you know what I'm saying, and finding out wasn't that big of a surprise either. I think I already kind of knew...I think deep down every core knows, to some degree. There's...not a lot that can be done now, so there's no use worrying about it. You got me?”

Mel had brought her legs up to her chest, her arms wrapped around her knees and she nodded at him. It was definitely a lot to take in, and she wanted to feel sorry for him. She found it difficult, now, simply for the fact that he didn't seem sorry at all. This didn't change anything, and he seemed happy, despite their predicament. Was there really all that to dwell on if he was content with his existence. At Mel's shift in attitude, Virgil grinned widely. “I don't get along with the other cores a whole lot. I fix them, but once they are patched up they leave. So the only thing I think I was ever bitter about was not having...having someone. Then I found you. So, again...” He held a hand out for the lady with the red hair. His Olympian. “Thanks, Mel.”

She did her best attempt at a chuckle, one she could only present when her chest heaved a moment, and threw him a cheeky, yet genuine smile. She reached out and clasped his hand firmly in the pact that they were in this together. He had her back and she had his, no matter the outcome. She didn't owe him anything. He didn't owe her anything, and that was fine. All they ever needed was the understanding that they were on an equal field of mutual respect and teamwork. Even if he was the idiot that threw himself into the junkyards a second time and she was the idiot that pushed herself to the point of blacking out.

Virgil was the first to release his grip, and it was to get out of his chair. “Now that we have all of that squared away, I think its time I got back to it! You stay here and rest up, I'm going to bring down some more food and water. Just sit tight while I work on the car. I'll bring you you're portal gun, you left it in the passenger seat.”

Oh, Mel had been wondering where she'd left that. She felt naked down here without it, in all honesty. If she had it off her arm for more than a few minutes she got antsy. As Virgil walked off to retrieve her portal gun and more food, Mel scraped at the sides of the can of and at the leftover pumpkin blissfully.

Just like mum used to make!

 

\---------

 

Virgil had taken to humming to himself again while he worked on his back under the car. He'd moved his goggles off his brown and over his glowing eyes. His vision was only slightly better than a human's was in the dark, so to make up for it his chest optic was using its flashlight feature to help him see what he was tinkering with. He had been working on the vehicle for a few hours now, and had even taken the time to fill it with whatever food and water Mel hadn't already eaten. It was the first time she got the chance to just stuff her mouth until she was full and was feeling quite pleased with herself. Since Virgil insisted on her not straining herself too much, she was passing the time throwing junk into portals she had placed in the office from where she was sitting and watch them bounce out the other end. Virgil got a quick peak at her childishness after he dragged himself out from working under the car and shook his head. He hollered out loud enough so she could hear him from inside the office.“Hey, Mel?! Can't just sit still for, like, five minutes?!”

Mel turned around, seeing Virgil through the giant, broken windows of the lobby and blowing a raspberry at him.

“Yeah, real charming!”

The job was nearly complete. If he could get this rust-bucket's engine to start then Mel could leave. And he would stay. He knew to want her around was selfish, but it was something he couldn't help feeling. He would never say it to her out loud. He assumed she knew already. Nothing he could really do. Now, what could he do? He could stay down in old Aperture for the rest of his days and not step foot into the Enrichment Center. That sounded like a plan. Banished to the center of the earth, as it were. He could live with it. He'd have to if he valued his life. Maybe he'd have the nanobots from his testing track come visit.

Mel had been tossing the empty pumpkin can through a portal so that it fell from the ceiling further up the room from her and tumbled down some stairs. She was running out of things to toss and was growing acutely bored again, wondering if the jukebox upstairs still worked. Most likely not. She was growing aware of the waterfalls of toxic goo outside the break area where the indoor park had been, and thinking the rushing liquid especially loud. Roaring, even. Mel raised a brow, rising from her seat and investigating. There was a cement dike with sitting benches that looked over the lake of goo as if it were some great beauty, Mel climbing its stairs to see the waterfall practically bursting with the waste! The lake level was rising, the broken off sphere in the center of it beginning to disappear under with every passing second. The waste would reach their level at any moment.

She would have yelled if she could, but all Mel could do to get Virgil's attention was to sprint full speed for the tunnel and grab him herself. The grease-monkey was about to dive back under the car, already on the floor when Mel rushed over and practically pulled his arm off getting him to stand. “AH! Mel?! What are you doing? Didn't I tell you to--”

Mel swiped a hand over her throat to signal him to shut up, pointing in the direction of the toxic waste. Virgil lifted the goggles off his eyes, stricken terrified once he realized what was happening. “G-GLaDOS is coyping AEGIS?! She's going to drown us!”

The tools, the car, food, and everything they had worked towards was abandoned as they rushed back into the office building, Mel already climbing the stairs while Virgil rushed into the room over and got the leaver to close the tunnel up. Hopefully, if the goo hadn't gotten through last time it would hold now as well. However, they could only go so far and the testing tracks were out of the question. There would need to be some serious improvising, Mel knocking down wood beams blocking a hallway to get to the door at the other end. A door she reached to open, but wouldn't budge. Virgil had just caught up to her, looking absolutely exasperated over his panic.

“OH, what is with you and doors?!” Taking a step back, he turned his shoulder towards the door and rammed it in, the lock breaking under his weight and flying open. Virgil fell through and hit the floor, Mel reaching down to grab and help pull him up as she was passing. The robot let Mel lead, for he was slower than her at walking let alone running, and he was useless to navigate without his wifi. “We need to get to the assist droid chamber! I'm going to try and contact her! Its got the only updated computer down here!”

Mel jumped a portal when they came to a conversion gel painted hallway with a collapsed ceiling, seeing a second wall painted up the salt mine from them and coming out onto a rusted catwalk. Once they were up there, Mel and Virgil looked down to the office lobby they had been occupying, toxic waste already pouring in halfway up the walls of the first floor. Virgil balled his fists up, feeling rage fill in the gaps where the panic had been now that they were a little further from the danger. Unable to contain it, he threw his arms into the air.

“Perfect! Just...PERFECT! All that work getting here! The testing droids, the junk yard, that stupid tube, the spheres, gathering supplies and tools! And now she's got it all flooded! That was my only plan and now its...its literally wasted! In toxic waste! Toxic waste wasted my escape plan! Well, take it! Gremlins are a dumb car anyway!” He kicked a rock off the catwalk so that it flew through the hair and landed in the liquid far bellow.

Mel's shoulders dropped. She didn't know what to feel. Had she expected something like this to go wrong after all? Sighing deeply, she took Virgil's hand in her own and lead him up the catwalk while he fumed, his tizzy evening out at a high plateau with no end in sight.

They were able to make decent travel time, finding a tight space tucked away with high walls of moon paint that helped them climb a little faster then if they had taken the test tracks. The goo continued to rise, but wouldn't reach the junkyards for while. Mel and Virgil sprinted their way through torn chain-link fences and past the junkyard offices, finding the white door and punching in the pass-code one more time. Once inside, Virgil shut the door behind them. If the toxic waste reached them in the time they were in there, the door was at least air-locked.

The two rushed to the monitor in the back, Mel sitting and putting her elbows on the console with her face in her hands while Virgil typed something into the keyboard. The android found a usb cord and plugged it in to the desktop, using his thumb to push back a tiny plate of his skin on the bottom side of his wrist. A sub port was built where his wrist met his palm, and he plugged himself into the desktop with a shiver. The sudden electric surge tingled, especially when he had been overworking himself. Mel looked up from her hands at Virgil to see what he was doing and jerking back when she saw that his face had gone as blankly as it been when he was in the capsule, only with his eyes open. The dead, doll like appearance was uncanny valley and Mel was just at the right level of uncomfortable to scoot her chair away a foot or two.

After about five minutes, Virgil snapped out of the daze he had been in, expression returning to his face and searching the room a moment as his vision caught up to him. He glanced at Mel as he removed the usb cord from his wrist, face fallen and defeated.

“So...Mel...remember earlier on we had an option to do Plan #1 or Plan #2?”

She nodded.

“Well...we're going back to #1...she wants me to bring you up.”


	9. Chapter 9

Mel was not happy. She really wasn't. In fact, she was out right glaring lasers at him. When he said he needed to contact the top lady, she didn't think he was doing it to wave a white flag. Crossing her arms over her chest, Mel waited for an explanation, which Virgil was quick to give when he could practically feel a hole being burned through his forehead.

“I know! I know! Its bad! I mean its really, really bad, Mel, but we don't have any other options. If you can just test with her for a while it can buy us some time. Its either that or she kills us here and now.”

Mel turned her eyes away from him, still silently fuming and her jaw moving to one side as she grit her teeth..

“Look, don't be stubborn! You know that if I had even a slightly better plan I would have put it out there. In fact, I could give you an example of a worse plan than this one. We try to out run her, we get caught, she decides that we aren't worth it and she kills us. There's a worse one than that, even. We stay here. In this room. We each choose a corner and rot in it. You over the course of a couple of years, and me over the course of a few centuries. I think we get about five days of communication before you stop functioning, and unlike my core this droid actually needs to be solar powered, if not naturally than artificially. Which is what these machines are for, if you can see the blue light above the chamber—yes, that blue light there. Notice mine's off. I could use that to live forever but, guess, what? You'll be dead. So how do I put myself in the chamber and turn it on at the same time? I don't. So I'll power down in a month. And you can't tell me it would be a sweet deal for the two of us to be knocking about in the after life like some kind of supernatural sitcom, because I don't think robots and humans walk in the same cosmic circles after the lights go out.”

Virgil vaguely recalled stories of an assembling line in the enrichment center where a scientist took apart his staff of assist droids and now the place was haunted up the walls with screaming robotic phantoms. He never believed in it, but it did seem to be a lot more attractive of an option than infinite sleep mode.

Mel didn't necessarily appreciate the sass, but she was aware she wasn't being less difficult than he was. Again, he was right, though. There wasn't a whole lot else they could do other than surrender. Defeat reached Mel in a sigh, her chest heaving heavily and her features running from rigid to relaxed. Virgil felt himself calm down as she did, turning his back to the computer and sliding to the ground so that he sat his back against it. GLaDOS was already calling off the rise of toxic waste, so they had a moment to breathe before heading up. The assist droid eyed the chamber with his core shell still inside, broken and lifeless. He never thought it odd to be looking at himself until now, the gravity hanging over them giving him an odd perspective of the room. For the first time, he was seeing it as a tomb. He thought about returning to his core, but they didn't have the two hours it would take for him to convert over. Maybe he'd just bring it with him.

Everything was quiet and dark. The only lights were that of the screen and the soft blue over the chambers, and a single sound was a faded, slow beeping inside the computer. It would soon be accompanied by the the scratches of pencil to paper, Mel reaching down and handing Virgil another note.

_I'll go. You stay._

Virgil put a hand to his forehead and groaned, his brow furrowing. “Come on, Mel. No heroics. I don't need that kind of charity.” He made sure to pocket that one as well, but for a vastly different reason than the first one. A momentum of the dumbest thing Mel ever wrote. She passed him another one. Her stack was starting to wear thin.

_She wants me alive._

“And she wants me thrown into an incinerator. Yeah, I know. I'm still thinking about how to work my way around that part, but its not going to be done by me sitting on my ass while you're flinging yourself around deadly testing tracks.” That one he crumbled into a tiny ball and tried to see how far across the room he could flick it from there. He slid further down the side of the computer until he was no longer sitting, but laying flat on his back over the cold, white floor tiles.

Scribbling could be heard once again from above him, Virgil flinching as a wad of paper dropped down onto his nose and rolled to his goggles.

_We've got this._

The droid felt his vent passage exhale, cooling him from the inside out and he nodded, raising a hand to Mel so that she could help him up.

“Yup. We've got this...” He found himself pacing, much like he had done in his repair wing while Mel had been asleep. He had the legs for it, and even a hand to hold thoughtfully to his artificially scruffy jaw. His thick eyebrows lowered with a wide train of ideas railing over them. Given the few moments of peace and quiet they were allowed, he slipped into his files, leafing through them in areas such as 'fire routes', 'emergency exits', 'air and solar high ways'. Anything that was connected to the world above them, but while Aperture had numerous exits only a few remained accessible. Those were the ones that were so difficult to find.

“Okay...okay I think I might have something. Its going to be tricky, but—Mel, are you even listening to me?” Virgil turned around to face the woman, only to see that the human had discovered the spin function on the swivel chair an was currently using her foot to push herself in a circle. She stopped and smiled at him with a rosiness forming in her cheeks. “We are under the thumb of death right now and you think this is the time to be messing around with a spinning chair? Do me a favor and make sure your head catches up to you and twists back on, okay?”

Mel nodded.

“I'm starting to think the other one wasn't brain damaged at all and this is just how people act. Urgh, anyway...” He released the pinch hold he had on his brow to look back up at her, chopping the air with his other hand as an emphasis of attention. “There are some testing tracks on the way up to GLaDOS where we might find some...help. Possibly. He's another core, like myself, but he's absolutely infuriating to work with. If I can bribe him in some way then you might have a clear shot out of here. Minus the car and supplies, but its still out. We can take a route that looks like we're heading up to see her. Purposely take passages with cameras, make sure we look like we're being diligent about following her orders. So...dead man walking sort of vibe, okay? Look sad.”

Mel tilted her head at him, her lower lip pulling forward into a pout and her eyes blinking into a crease of disappointment. Making sure to bat her lashes, she ran a finger down her left cheek to imitate a false tear. Virgil was less than impressed by her.

“A-huh, that's funny. Very cute. Please be serious.”

_Don't be a square._

“I'm not —what?! I don't understand what you are trying to imply. I'm clearly an orb!”

 

\--------

 

One would think travel through Aperture, without the worry of moving behind security eyes, would have been easier, if not slightly. However, many of the places Virgil had Mel travel through before were behind the scenes nooks and crannies that most human never used back in the active testing days of the facility, and were only meant for management purposes. In other words, the safest places in Aperture just happened to double as shortcuts. Getting from point A to point B along a route that expected you to visit many different sectors along the way to whatever job you had planned on attending that morning, made things a little more complicated. It was a very similar concept behind the idea of traffic cones. Driving around one was a requirement and just made the most sense, but to cut straight through them was faster and potentially more dangerous. For that reason alone, the only relief Mel and Virgil shared between themselves was that it was nice to be on a catwalk that didn't feel like it was going to shatter beneath them and send them plummeting back into the salt mines.

They both seemed to have a talent for falling.

Virgil, against his better judgment of wanting to keep his core safe in the chamber, had his old shell tucked tightly under his arm with his opposite hand gripping the rim of the circular opening at its side. He was clearly put off by needing to carry himself around, and looked uncomfortable with the task. It made him more cautious of the portals they used or what grids to go through. He had become something of a mother goose with her egg tucked protectively under wing and ready to snap at anything that threatened it.

“This isn't anywhere near my testing track, so would you help me look around a bit? I need to find a port.” Virgil lead Mel out of the endless scope of the enrichment center to the relief of some newer office rooms that looked practically untouched from the last humans that had been in there. Even decorative furniture such as potted plants, wall clocks, and various personal nick-knacks around the cubicles had stay in place, though the plants that once occupied the pots were long dead and withered.

Mel stopped at one of the desks, taking from it a bobble figure of a striped, orange cat in a hula skirt that swayed when moved. Though she wanted to take amusement in how adorable the bobble toy was, it also reminded her that this was, at one time, some poor employee's desk that was now long dead and gone. If what Virgil said was true and that she and the other test subject had been the only two to ever escape Aperture, then it would have been a miracle if the owner of this desk space still breathed somewhere in this world. She was surprised with herself that she was glad to find there were no personal photos around any of the desks. The closest implication she could find behind any of these employee's personal lives was a mug that read '#1 Dad' in chipped, black lettering.

“Hey, Mel! I've got something for ya!”

She looked up to see Virgil waving down the room from her, holding aloft a yellow cube in his free hand. He gave it a light toss and Mel caught it against her stomach, using her thumb to leaf over the corner of the new sticky-notes bad.

“You're almost out on your other one, right?”

She nodded, but was a little disappointed.

“What's wrong?”

She was defeated enough to use one of the last of her cube notes to write to him.

_Its not pink. :(_

Virgil wanted so badly to be annoyed with such an odd and pointless observation, but a laugh passed his teeth with a bemused grin he knew was too late to take back at this point. Time was getting very close to just tapping out and letting her human habits roll over his chipped shoulders. “We can't just keep finding you pink ones, Mel. Why does it have to be pink?”

_Pink's my favorite color._

“Is that so?”

Jokes aside, Mel remembered the sign for 'thank you', putting her fingers to her lips and then bringing them away in a downwards sweep.

“Oh, your welcome. Might want to look for a few pens, while we're at it. That pencil won't last long either.” Virgil went back to inspecting the office, keeping to the walls and bending over to a hidden panel given away by the smallest square-shaped line in the paint. Knocking it hard with a fist, the panel popped open to bring a personality sphere port to light. “Aha! Here we go. Now just gotta...” He was careful fixing his core shell onto the stick in the wall, letting it latch on automatically. Standing back, he pulled at the collar of his oversized jacket in satisfaction. “Don't have to worry about that anymore. Just some insurance.”

Mel, who had found a couple of ballpoint pens, used one of her scavenges on the last pink note.

_Insurance?_

“This is a charging station. Even though my core is powered down, its only sleeping and not truly off. My memory storage is here--” He put an upside-down gun-point finger to his head. “--functions are behind my optic, like room temperature or whatever, but my memory files are here. Everything from my motherboard to my fans in my old body are still using up energy, though. Now, if my sphere does decide it wants to turn off that's all well and fine. As long as I'm using this assist droid its not going to effect me. This just insures that when I do decide to transfer back that I'm not just dumping my files into something with no power left.”

Mel followed his examples and nodded, but found herself staring back down at the floral painted core behind her droid friend. It had been the small robot she had grown so attached to their last time seeing each other, and though she had no doubt in her mind anymore that the Virgil standing before her was truly himself, she couldn't help but feel nostalgic towards the core. She figured he felt the same she did, if not to a stronger degree. However, it was becoming clear to her that even though the assist droid no longer had wifi, it was more technologically advanced in every other area.

They had precious little time, but she had taken what of it they used to have in the lower sections for granted, and she decided to put her fresh notes to some vital use.

_You would have died if you left Aperture with me._

Virgil frowned and pushed his hands into his hair again. Humans never seemed to have much understanding of a gray-scale and held things to the sun in black and white. Whatever wasn't lit or shaded didn't exist. “I figured you might have wanted me to go with you...but its a little more complicated than that. Yeah, I would have powered down, and that...yeah that's pretty awful. I've been through it one other time, I do not recommend it to anyone...but I can always come back online if given power. So its more like sleeping for a very, very long time. Provided nothing else happens of course. Other than that, I just didn't want to leave.”

_You don't seem to like it here._

“I don't!” Virgil raised his hands up in a sudden burst of exasperation. “I hate it here! Everyone does! Yeah that one guy almost trashed the place, but it all happened because he was trying to get the hell out! When GLaDOS isn't around it falls into disrepair and things get broken, and rusted, and hard to navigate and bad things happen like cores falling off busted rails into the junkyards – referring to myself, by the way, not sure if you caught that.”

She did. She nodded. He knew she did, and she knew that he knew that she did, but she accepted his sarcasm anyway.

“Yeah, so either that happens or when she IS online, she terrorizes everything. Here, have a shiny new, functioning enrichment center, but you are all going to do as I say or be incinerated. I found a way to change the funnels she uses to drop cores down into so that they get escorted to random parts of the facility when triggered by their distress signal, and thankfully she never found out about it—wait are there cameras here?” Virgil stopped his tirade to look around the room, slightly dumbfounded by his own rash outburst, but once he discovered that they were safe from prying ears he continued. “No, okay we're good. Uh, what was I saying...oh yeah, the incineration chutes! Before I did that if we crossed the line in anyway it was a straight drop into flames hot enough to burn a hole clean through a M1A2 Abrams! I try to keep my handlebars down and be as discrete as mechanically possible so I don't piss her off.”

_So other than turning off, why not come with me?_

“Uuuummmm...” There were feelings to be considered. Mel's feelings, and that they could be hurt if he said the wrong thing in the wrong way. It certainly hadn't been because of her, but if he didn't explain, that would be just as terrible as saying it was. He crossed an arm over his torso as the other gripped a hand go his mouth, staring at the floor for a beat. He removed the hand to talk. “I don't have any reason to go. Its not that I don't enjoy your company, I already let you in on my thoughts on the matter, but outside of that there isn't anything for me up there. Its not a world where cores can be. We were made for this place. Rails were made for us, charging ports, and tasks that we've been assigned to. That all goes away up there. The rogue core wanted to leave because he was too stupid to consider that. He was made to have bad ideas. There are reasons no other personality core had attempted it before then. Though he probably could have gotten away with it better than I could have. I'm one of ten models that were made before the solar upgrade and the last one to be equipped with wifi other than GLaDOS herself.”

OH! That reminded her. Mel's eyes widened and she started scribbling furiously on the notes, Virgil finding the sudden spark of energy odd and raising brow at her as he leaned back against the charging station with his arms crossed. He blinked at the finished note. This one he felt compelled to read allowed, or else his memory wouldn't have processed it correctly with how confounded he was.

“What...is...wifi?”

Virgil's face twisted up, his eyes brightening with each stretch of his grin until he burst out laughing. All that time he had been going on and on and on and on about his precious wifi and he had never once explained it to the lady he had pulled straight out of 1952 where colored television wouldn't even be put to market for another two years. He realized that in the hilarity of it all, it might have looked like he was laughing at her, and he quickly tried to communicate that was not the case, though it would be done through a thick wall of giggle fits.

“I-I'm sorry I'm not—aahaha I 'm not making fun of you! I'm just mad at myself! Oooooooh hoo boy, one second. God I'm an idiot, I'm so sorry. Hah...wifi. Wiiiiffffiiiii...” He heaved, his vents making an audible whir Mel could hear even from where she stood, and waited for the assist droid to compose himself patiently. “Its a wireless connection that allows me access to anything with power that gives off a signal. Monitors, cameras, speakers, or really anything in Aperture. Everything is wifi compatible, but not everything is wifi capable. That's how GLaDOS is able to move everything around so easily. My earlier days as a core are really fuzzy, but I remember digging up a file that said that I was given universal wifi but other cores down the line weren't equipped with it because I was...well I was being kind of bossy and kept using it where the scientists didn't want me to. So now the only core other than myself that has it is GLaDOS, and her's has a limited reach that extends to only updated Aperture tech. I can bring up files or open doors without having to be plugged into anything, basically.”

Mel had figured most of that from just watching him work, but it was nice to have a solid explanation now. One last thing.

_You can be solar powered now, right?_

“That doesn't mean I should go.” He wasn't manufactured yesterday, he knew just where this was going. He was starting to get irritated again with having to repeat himself like a scratched up laser disc.“I'm built for here.”

_Your core was built for here. You're human._

It wasn't until Mel had written this note and presented it to Virgil that she realized that the clock she had seen hanging on the wall from earlier still worked, the silence between them amplifying its ticking until it was practically deafening. Something dark came over the assist droid, and it lowered what little light the ceiling lamps provided to a dimmer quality with its presence. Mel felt herself studied, as if Virgil had suddenly gained telepathy and was picking at her thoughts. She bit her lip anxiously, wondering if what she had written was all that bad. When Virgil did speak, it was a tone sharp enough to slice through the silence like one of the lasers Aperture used to cut and form the weighted testing cubes, and sudden enough it almost started her already worked up nerves.

“Would you prefer it if I was?”

He had gone from studying to a locked gaze, Mel finding it hard to move under the yellow glowing eyes and he all of a sudden didn't look as human as she had been unintentionally working herself up into believing. Once again, just like when he had plugged himself into the computer in the assist droid chamber, he was a machine. She felt she had given off the wrong impression, despite this, and had put a pen to her yellow note paper. She had gotten only three letters written when a voice reached them from down the hall.

“Hey? Is someone in here?”

A dull orange light bounced around the walls, Mel looking up and noticing for the first time a management rail hugging the wall that extended into the hallway. A core slid into the room, the orange ring of his optic contracting at the sight of the unexpected guests. “OH jeez! You're the two GLaDOS is looking for! The Rogue Maintenance Core and Miss Olympic Psycho Pants!”

“Rogue?! I'm not rogue!” Virgil jumped up from where he'd been leaning against the charging station. “And she's not psycho, but more importantly who's calling me rogue?”

“Um, everyone. You two are the biggest thing since the I.D core went rampaging through here with the tenacious test subject. The whole enrichment center knows about it.” The personality core's optic spun upwards in amusement and he laughed. “What a wreck you two are. GLaDOS wants you turned into scrap metal, Virgil. How did you get a hold of THAT fancy thing, by the way. Nice monkey suit.”

“Hrnnngh...” Virgil huffed, but took in a breath and gestured to the orange-eyed core near the wall. “Mel, this is Nigel. Nigel, Mel. We're here to ask you for some help.”

“Oooooh yeah, don't tell me.” Nigel, as the core seemed to be named, squinted his lids at Virgil and Mel and shook them back and forth. Mel couldn't help but notice he seemed to have a very young voice. She wondered how old he had been when he was converted. “You want to use my vacuum tunnels, right? To get this human to the surface faster? How warm am I?”

“Burning.” Which is what Virgil wished was literally happening to the other robot. “Look, I'm willing to bargain. Whatever you need I can get it for you.”

“Virgil, I'm offended!” Nigel reared back and his eye widened, sounding about as emotionally scarred as a child would be if presented with a bucket of candy. Needless to say, not at all. “I don't want anything from you. I'm just happy to be helping a fellow core out. Either way, its not something I'd want from you. Your human friend, on the other hand...”

Virgil and Mel exchanged worried glances, but of course he'd have to speak for the human. “What about her?”

“Tell you two what. If she can solve my toughest test chamber then she can ride one of my vacuums aaaallllll the way up top.”

“What?! That's insanity! Why do you need her testing?”

“I get bored just like everyone else. I haven't tested in a while. I kind of miss my last human. I'm not asking for the whole track, just the last room. Then you can go.”

Mel put a hand on Virgil's shoulder, pretty sure that if she hadn't he would have attempted to grab at Nigel. She turned him towards her and shrugged her shoulders, raising her portal gun. “No, I get it Mel, you are really good with that thing, but Nigel's testing track is different. They require a gun that shoots gels instead of portals. You aren't experienced with it yet and he wants you to perform the hardest track in there.”

“I'll run her through maybe one training room first, if that makes you feel any better about it. Either way I figured you two were in a hurry, what with GLaDOS on your tails. No point in putting you through the whole track and grabbing her attention.”

“Urgh, forget it. We'll find something else.” Virgil growled up at his fellow core and turned to walk out of the office. “Come on, Mel. We're not listening to this rat.”

The woman grabbed for Virgil's arm, the droid almost yanking her down with one last step just by how out of control his own strength was, and turned to a face furrowed with determination and, as always, that stubborn streak that was both her most admirable and frustrating personality trait. He shook his head at her, his lips pursed angrily.

“You're nuts.”

She nodded.


	10. Chapter 10

_I'm in space._

Virgil glanced sidelong at the note Mel held up for him. The fact that the paper was yellow made things slightly more ironic than it already was, but he stuffed his hands into his jacket pockets and turned his eyes back to the testing chamber with a huff.

“Yup, we're both in space.”

Despite everything, Mel found that she was strangely giddy about this testing chamber. It was nothing like she had seen since coming to Aperture, with high ceilings and walls simulated black with stars, far off galaxies, the moon, and a distant Earth. Or, what she assumed was Earth. Mel turned to Virgil and grabbed for his arm, startling the core android and he watched her point excitedly up at the blue ball of water, clouds, and soil. It was, once again, a moment when he wanted to continue being peeved, but her glee was contagious. The smile he offered her was sideways and endeared, though still a mask shading his worry. “That's a real photo of the Earth taken from Aperture's own space unit, same as the moon. We had astronauts of our own to retrieve moon rocks for the conversion gel. How's it lookin', Mel?”

_It's gorgeous! It looks like a blue glass marble!_

“I can see that, yeah.” Virgil felt himself relax a bit more as he pictured the Earth as a marble, scratching at his chin thoughtfully. “If we weren't so pressed for time I'd get you photos of the other planets in our solar system.”

“I can take care of that, actually, if you think it will help her test performance! They are screens, after all.” Nigel was hanging around a high management rail above their heads, far enough up that he had to amplify his voice in order to be heard. “Lets try this desktop then!”

In the time it took to blink, the walls and domed ceiling had changed to yet another panned view of space but with the different planets in their varying sizes lined in a ring around the center testing track. Jupiter, to Mel, was the most impressive with its scale and vibrant orange stripes, but the rings around Saturn absolutely astounded her into disbelief.

_Are any of them livable?_

“For humans, no.” Virgil explained. “Not unless you set up a station with supplies and oxygen and all that other stuff humans need, but you couldn't just walk out onto one as you are now. The giants, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune, aren't even solid for the most part. They have a much smaller core at their center, but are made of of mostly gas and each one had the potential to be a sun at one point. So they actually are not as big as they appear. Of course, there's been discoveries of other planets other than these ones outside of our own galaxy with suns and everything. Not sure which ones hold life yet. There used to be talk of inter-dimensional life theories around Black Mesa, but I'm afraid my records are a little outdated on the subject. Aperture Science didn't necessarily get along with them very well.”

“Well, Miss?” Nigel piped up from above once again, grounding Mel back to the chamber and out of orbit. “This suit your fancy?”

She beamed at the orange core.

“Great! Then let's get started. Virgil, I'm going to have to ask you to hit the bench for now until the test is done.”

“Yeah, yeah, I'm going.” The maintenance droid rode right back into grumps-ville, his hands still in his pockets and slouching as he left the platform to go sit by the exit button.

Mel reached for the strange gun by her feet. As Nigel had promised she did get a blank room all to herself to practice with it before they entered the real testing track. It was just like a portal device, but shot out splats of the orange and blue gels she had used in previous tests rather than actual portals. She had to wonder, though, how one small paint blaster could hold so much gel. She had created a mess in the other room and it looked as full as it did when Nigel gave it to her. Mel rolled her shoulders back a few times to relax the tension in them and eyeballing the chamber carefully.

She had to wonder what Virgil had gotten so worked up over, but she trusted his judgment and if he was wary of Nigel then she wasn't willing to let herself get very attached, if at all. From the way the two spoke, it seemed that there were other cores in the facility that may not have been as kind towards humans as Virgil was. Above the gripes and overbearing sense of frustration he had with her less than coordinated antics, he couldn't be further from the description of 'malicious'.

“Oh! And one more thing before you start testing!” Nigel called out again, Mel watching Virgil roll his eyes from the far end of the chamber before turning her own up at the newer core to pay attention. “At the end there is a moving platform that is triggered when the test is done. The maintenance core is actually sitting on it. Do NOT get on that. It will transport you to an incinerator for track completionists. I mean, unless it was your life's dream to get dropped into a fiery doom pit, then by all means go for a ride. Just thought I'd give you a heads up.”

“GAH!” Mel looked back up in Virgil's direction as the android very quickly removed himself from the slab he'd been sitting cross-legged on, tripping over his heavy weighted legs as he did and almost falling.

Mel shook her head. That answered that then.

The deeper into testing the chamber Mel got, the more she could see of why Virgil had been so concerned. She found herself veering a little out of focus from the gels and looking for white walls to shoot portals at that she no longer had. The transition between portals and paint was proving to not be a very smooth one, and the added atmosphere of clouded mist hiding the toxic goo around the platforms and the solar system screens didn't make her feel any calmer. So much for that part of the test.

Despite the hardships with the device, the room was like any other puzzle and one she was starting to piece together quickly. The purple and green grids were certainly different, and to her the most confounding part of the test even after Nigel had explained them. As Mel worked, Virgil made sure to keep a sharp eye on her in case he needed to jump in and do...well, he didn't know what he would do but it would be something. He couldn't remember if this body came with the program that wouldn't allow cores to cheat the tests—yup, there it was. He found the file. Great.

Even still, he kept an eye on her with sharp focus that was only mildly blunted by Nigel when the other core decided to come over and strike up a conversation.

“So that Affection Core down in the companion cube assembling line--”

“Bella.” Virgil corrected, though he was only half paying attention. Maybe not even that.

“Yeah, Bella. She one melted sheet of case plating or what?”

“Identified male construct preference.”

Nigel blinked widely and nodded “Oh, just like Rainbow Core.”

Virgil jerked forward a little bit and sputtered, burying his face into his hands. Nigel backed off in concern.

“Uh, you okay there? You break something?”

Mel came shooting through the air like a bullet, landing beside the two cores and moving the cube she'd grabbed to the button. Just as Nigel had said, the platform he had warned them of raised and moved back into a fresh opening in the wall, sliding along a rail towards what Mel presumed was the furnace somewhere around the corner of the hall. Though she did not see flames from where she stood, the air was certainly much warmer coming out of the passage.

“Good work, human!” Nigel congratulated.

Virgil picked the portal device off the floor from beside him and held it out for her. “Here, trade ya!” Mel was more than happy to oblige, surrendering the tag gun and Virgil handing it up to towards Nigel. “What do we do with this?”

“Just leave it on the ground and my nanobot team will come and retrieve it in a little bit. You two follow me and I'll get you to that vacuum tube!” A small section of the screens that made up the walls of the chamber moved aside form next to the trio, revealing an extra passage heading away from the intended exit. Now that Mel had her portal gun fit securely back on her arm she nudged Virgil with it to head out. He was still very much hesitant, but they had wasted enough time testing to spare anymore of it with Nigel. Now was the time of action or demise.

The tag core lead them down a series of dark, fairly wide halls that intersected into other rooms, each door with a number and letter much like a hotel and the ground beneath their feet had even been switched from cement to a dark fabric carpet. “Don't mind these. They're just what's left over of the relaxation center that didn't get absolutely demolished. I've kept all of mine in pretty good condition, though there are no more humans left in them anymore. We went through all of them.”

Mel's face twisted into a disgusted frown, put off kilter by how casually the core could speak like that over lost lives. It reminded her of the central core and how misplaced from reality she was that she thought death to not only be a light subject, but an amusing one. Credit to the orange tag core, he wasn't nearly as bad. She wondered if some of the AIs just couldn't help but feel indifferent towards death. Even Virgil was surprisingly calm about the subject of his previous mortality as a once living person. It was hard for Mel to wrap her head around, but it did make sense at least.

They came to an open tube that was exactly like the ones that had dropped cubes and turrets into the testing chambers she had solved in the past. She'd walked along top of them as shortcuts in the past, and this one was not only open but functioning. The air around them was sucked up into the glass shell, Mel feeling the pull on her hair and loose fitting clothes from where she stood.

“Just as I said. Here's the vacuum to the surface! You earned it with that testing track. And IIIIII get some extra scores. It's a win for both of us.”

Mel flashed him another smile, but the kind of fleeting grin that one gives a passing stranger in order to be polite. She took a step towards the tube, but Virgil grabbed her arm. He'd been staring at the tube and anxiously wringing his hands when he took them back from his friend's shoulder. “I, um...I've never been on one of these before. A lot of other cores use it as a means to get around fast, but a lot of the time they come to me with broken parts after wards. I mean, there hasn't been any lethal damage yet, but--”

Mel turned fully towards Virgil and took both his hands into her own to stop him from fiddling with them. Making sure that they shared eye contact, she gestured for him to keep looking at her. She was soft and squishy, unlike his robot body, and was taking the first step towards the tube. That had to count for something, and he shut his jaw to nod at her. If someone who was a physically more vulnerable than he was could take the chutes, then he had no excuses. Closing his eyes, he jumped at the air funnel with her and cried out as it sucked them straight up.

Mel would have laughed. She would have cried out and shouted with joy at the ride they were experiencing in the tubes. Virgil was less impressed to start out with, and continued to worry as they were swept along. Something tickled the back of his head, however, and the weight elevated from his back and shoulders when his artificial personality kicked a simulation of adrenaline into high gear.

“A-hah! I...I think I like this, actually! Yeah, this isn't so bad!” He had to shout over the rushing wind at Mel, who could only crane her neck up in his direction and nod with the widest smile he'd seen on her since they met. The pipes twisted and turned, spinning their way around test chambers, walk ways, and other lines of the same network from all over the facility carrying cubes, turrets, and other Aperture inventions along. Mel blinked at a fat, rather rounded turret that passed over her head just as she was swept underneath its tube, wondering what function a turret would have with that size. Maybe it was made simply to pack more bullets into.

The tube straightened out eventually and Mel could see an opening coming up on them fast. She suddenly remembered that Virgil had jumped in after she had, there for was trailing behind. Considering his weight, Mel cringed and turned to try to signal him but she was making no sense at all with her hand gestures and she didn't want to risk losing her notepads or pens. Virgil shook his head at her. “You know I don't understand you when you get emotional. Wave your hands like a normal lunatic.”

She smacked his arm, the core flinching and rubbing at it. “Ow, that smarts...oh. OOOH!”

He was almost too late. That very second Mel was flung from the tube and across a small, dark room, Virgil kicking his reflexes in high gear and managed to grab the rim of the exit, grasping the glass and his chest heaving from where he'd made himself stuck. It worked. He made a decent lid, and Mel was on the other side of the room from him busy being not-squished under the velocity his weight would have been thrown at her. She moved out of the way, allowing Virgil to let go of the tube with a surprised yelp and he fell to the floor like a stone. So much for any of that velocity. He'd stopped the remaining momentum he'd gained when he'd grabbed the chute and planted himself there like a clinging vine.

“That was close...you humans are hard to take care of.” He groaned from the floor, Mel reaching down to help collect him.

The room wasn't much to look at. It was small, bare, dark, and with only door that held a glowing green 'exit' sign above it. Mel traced her hands along the wheel, her heart pounding in her chest and throbbing in her ears from the rush of the tubes. She was hesitating.

“You're not having trouble with that door too, are you?”

Her shoulders quivered and she shook he head, giving the wheel a good tug and the door hanging open with a loud, heavy creak. It was dark, Mel catching glimpses of a star studded sky and the whispering of crickets in the wheat surrounding the exit. She hadn't kept track of just how long she'd been down there, but the moon was rising over the horizon just like it had the night she was re-abducted. Round, gold, warm, and welcoming. Just like...

She turned to Virgil and he felt like tilting over under the weight that now damaged her once cheerful blue eyes into despair. He himself wasn't prepared to say goodbye a second time, but sure was hiding it a lot better than she was. He put his hands in his pockets and shrugged his shoulders, smiling fondly at her. “Well...Nigel did something right. You're out. Got you here faster than I could have, even.”

Mel shook her head, turning around to take his hands up into her own and gently pulled them in the direction of the door. She took her notes out, but Virgil put a hand over the notepad before she could write anything.

“Let's...make this less hard than it needs to be, okay? You don't need the notes to say goodbye. I'm going to start heading back. Maybe Nigel can help me get down to old Aperture quicker. I doubt she's going to flood the place just trying to weed me out now that you're gone.”

Mel was determined and she pulled her hand away from his to write furiously on her notes, handing him one she with especially small handwriting for the message she wanted to get across to him.

_You are better than this place. You have potential it can no longer afford. Human or not, you think your purpose is here when it's being wasted on a facility that doesn't care anymore._

She didn't mean for it to, but that had stung and he squared his shoulders out with a grimace. “It's my programming, Mel! Don't you see that? I was made for this job. Taking that away is like...like taking away your bronze medal or just your ability to run in general. It's a piece of who I am and out there it's gone. It no longer exists. It's bad enough I'm going to be secluded to a broken, run down sector of the facility, but at least there I can find something to do. You were out there for months and you didn't see anything! I'll go haywire! I'm asking, now that I've seen you out of here again, that you do me a favor and accept the fact that I just can't leave. I'm not expecting you to understand.”

Mel's chin stiffened, the two staring each other down firmly and she chanced another note.

_You're scared but so am I. I've been alone. You've been alone. We don't have to be anymore._

She just wasn't leaving. He couldn't make her understand. It was impossible for her to grasp the concept of abandoning the very thing that your existence was meant to be for. He feared that if he just turned around and went back to the tunnel that she would follow him. She'd already contemplated staying once, if she was feeling emotional enough she would act on it again and he couldn't have that. This was hard, and the only way to get her to turn tail and run from this place and never look back was if he got just as emotional.

“I'm honestly welcoming the chance to get some peace and quiet now, actually. Because this...this whole thing has been insane and I don't want anymore of it. The most insulting part of it all is that you don't want me going out there. No, not me as in an android or a talking metal eyeball. You want other people, so you've been imprinting the need for human interaction onto this assist droid and thinking I'm just going to up and abandon my programming so you can have a buddy to frolic around those wheat fields with. You keep forgetting that I am a machiiiiine. No blood. No organs. No heartbeat. The only thing separating me from GLaDOS is that I am not crazy! I am closer in relation to her than I am you.”

_That's not true._

“Oh? 'Cause I act more human than she does? 'Cause I'm not a raving murderer? What then?”

_Because you care._

Virgil, as much of a strong front he believed himself to have, wasn't aware of his shoulders coming down from their tension and making him appear smaller. He couldn't find anything to respond with. She'd seen through him and she held her ground. It was basically useless and he was honestly exhausted. He couldn't have said anything more, and he didn't want to. It all came back to one, simple fact that they both knew very well about him and it was the subject of Mel's next note.

_You're a terrible liar._

“You know, I've noticed most AIs are, actually...heh...” He dug his face back into his hands, his shoulders pushing up and then collapsing with heave and he nodded. “I'll walk with you...I'll stay with you until we can find you a town but then I need to come back here. Would you let me go after that?”

Mel bit her lip once again, a habit she had tried to purge with the use of lipstick but her last shade had worn off months ago. She nodded, however, and Virgil pointed at her. “I'm holding you to that. You agreed.”

She agreed.

She also counted on him changing his mind in that time. Of course, he knew that. He wondered about it himself. Virgil faked a shallow bow and motioned an arm at the open door.

“After you, Mel.”

She grabbed for his arm excitedly and with an involuntary noise he was yanked out into the night air with her.

Air.

Virgil was confused. He screwed his nose up so that it wrinkled and he paused. There was no change in temperature, and he knew after being in that tunnel that he could feel wind. Was there not supposed to be a breeze? The optic on his chest twitched and spun, sending him statistics on the outside world and came back to his mind with one conclusion. They were still indoors.

“MEL!” Virgil gripped the human's arm hard enough that she managed to make a choking gasp at the pain it sent shooting up it to her shoulder. He yanked her away just as a claw came out from the floor in front of the 'wheat' they had mistaken to be real. He pulled her back into the shed and for the tunnel, but it was already all folding away and disappearing into the panels below.

_**“I honestly thought the two of you would never stop talking.”** _

GLaDOS' voice ripped fear into the two captives. Mel searched the ceiling as screens similar to the simulation in Nigel's testing track blinked away to just black screens, the field and sky gone forever. The central core lowered herself from the ceiling, her chamber shaping back into its old form.

“I don't think I've ever witnessed such a disgusting display of drama. The both of you are completely irrational. I see that you found an assist droid, metal ball. I suppose you decided that having more of yourself to burn just sounded to be the most reasonable priority.” A claw shot up from the floor behind Virgil, lifting him from the ground and hanging in the air with its grip tight against his torso

“AARHG! Wait! No! M-Mel?!”

Mel had reached out for him too late, only managing to hold onto his hand until he realized he was going to pull her up with him and released the grip himself.

Mel froze, feeling as though a great cavity collapsed within her chest at the sound of her friend's voice overhead. The central core had the assist droid grasped firmly between the clasp of a large, mechanical claw teethed with gripping spikes. Virgil winced, a circuit shorting and sparking out from under the claws as they dug into him. He choked out a small, pathetic cry at the zap it bore into him, the android's eyes darting ing fear and the small chance at seeing any kind of escape from the claw. He was at a loss, and the only one that seemed to be in shape to do anything, at all, was the human. God was he scared. "Aagh--Ow! Jeez! M-Mel...?"

 ** _“Did the two of you really think that you'd pass me by that easily? You, a dysfunctional maintenance core and a mentally crippled, mute psychopath.”_ ** This made GLaDOS ever more intrigued with Mel. Science was proving compatible with a very specific trait in humans that made them better testers than the rest had been over the years. If she found more like her...well, maybe not all at once, for she could barely handle one lunatic, but any extras would be worthy of storage until use was needed.

**_“I'm sure we can come to some kind of small agreement. As long as you keep testing your friend stays here. With me. I will not crush him. I will not incinerate him. He will remain safe. From you, of course, since you are the one that's put him into this mess to begin with. How sad.”_ **

Virgil tried his strength to ignore the white, merciless god behind him and focused back on the human. “Don't listen to her. Mel, you have got to get out of here. You need to take those track legs of yours and just run. I don't think I can help you anymore but you are fully capable of getting through this...this hell without me!”

Mel stood her ground, unable to move from under the shade of the giant before her. She had been distraught, and hearing him giving up was not what she wanted to see. How could she blame him? Look at where they had landed themselves. Through her distress, the faintest spark of defiance towards both cores, central or otherwise, shone with the fire pitted in her stomach. Virgil caught that fire and, honestly, it made him angry.

“You still don't listen to me very well, do you? Mel, I am done! I can't help you! You can't be waiting for me to just...just zap myself down there and make things okay! Me! Virgil! Done! You see the giant death android behind me don't you?! I'm the cake now! She has me dangling from a promise she isn't planning on keeping for a reward you are never going achieve so you need to just go!”

 ** _“She can leave whenever she wishes...you would be free to go with her. The exit is at the end of this testing track if you want it that badly. The quicker she solves the chambers the sooner she can leave.”_** GLaDOS was more than willing to defend her side, but with the certain knowledge that the desperate core beneath her would not make a difference in the subject's mind. They were funny like that. Weak could even be used to describe the insanity behind the bonds humans could have and what they were willing to do to keep them. **_“Continue testing at your own pace.”_**

“Don't you dare keep testing!” Virgil snapped back down at her. Mel felt her legs grow weak, a voiceless chunk of her emotional state catching in her throat. Behind the burning frustration with her, Virgil's logic told him that it was hopeless...for him. It kicked him around the bend that Mel didn't see what potential she had that he couldn't achieve. “I was wrong to think that we could let her toy with us until a better solution just dropped out of thin air. I was stupid! But I'm not going to let everything we worked for go flying out the window, and if you aren't going to fight this then I am not going to give you a reason to stick around!”

There was a pause, Virgil glaring Mel down for the longest time before turning to the robot who's grip he felt scrape against his biometric plating as he moved. “GLaDOS, dear...have you been putting on weight?”

There was a sharp, almost verbal snap that drew taught in the air as the much larger robot turned her visor in Virgil's direction, her eye narrowing and the usual calm sway of her body grinding back into a stiff coil. One word stamped itself into the air like a hot iron as response.

_**“What?”** _

“Well, I mean you physically can't get much bigger than you already are, unless you got an upgrade, but in the metaphorical sense your ego's gotten enormous. You seem to think that you are the only robot around that can run this facility but I think we've seen proof that just any core with even the smallest functioning brain capacity could just throw themselves into the mainframe and take over. I mean, not all of them would be able to know how to keep the place from blowing up, but I bet I could.”

Mel panicked, feeling the white hot anger rise from bellow GLaDOS to pulse through every overhanging circuit attached to her body. The scariest part of it all was that she had grown quiet. GLaDOS was never quiet.

Virgil, at this point, had gone into hysterics and started laughing. It wasn't a very kind laugh and, in fact, disturbed Mel to the point of chills prickling up her arms and along the spine of her back.

“Oh sure, you're wondering 'just who is this pathetic insect of a core to dare proclaim he could run this place?' Well, sister, not only could I run this facility with my lights off, but I could probably do it better! You know that whole level bellow us that you tried to flood? Well guess who can navigate it and not you? Me, that's who. I have access to places I bet you probably don't even know you have. And the funny part is, I think the wifi in my old body reaches further than your's. Yeah! I'm the only robot in this entire facility that has free range wifi and then ruined it for the other droids from ever dreaming of having it because apparently I was too bossy to have that much privilege and they took it away from newer models. So, not only can I be in places you can't but if it weren't for your throne I could get this place to work for me whenever I ask it. So. Want to plug me in and see if I could prove myself right? That a simple personality construct could out rank you in any way possible? Eh? Sa-weeeeet-heart?”

The sound that preceded the event to come was, overall, underwhelming, as well as swift. The loud, but unforgivably short crunch of crushing metal in only a twitch of the claws that held Virgil above the ground. They dug straight into the optic driven into his chest plate, the lens blaring with sparks of electricity as he was pinned into an upright position. That, in itself, had all been undramatic for what meaning it held.

The scream that Virgil made, however, was not.

Pain ripped through every joint and vein of his android body, Virgil's chest being crushed inwards into a cave and the electrical fire that now crackled around him heating and burning the cooling agent that kept his body from reaching magma levels of intense heat. It dripped down into a pool of glowing yellow liquid on the black floor tiles.

_“aaaaaaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGHHH--!!!”_


	11. Chapter 11

“ _\--AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGH!!”_

“ _Get him on oxygen! We need him stabilized!”_

“ _Dr. Grey! Dr. Strut! Hold him down!”_

_Blazing, cold white light. Strong fingers dug into his bare arms, bruising along the skin. Daggers to the head. Hot, metal, stabbing pins. His throat gave, hoarse from screaming._

“ _Conversion at 35%!”_

_Only his head hurt. He could no longer feel the rest of his body. He might as well be a head. Nothing but that. A head. This wasn't science. It was cold murder. He couldn't speak. Could no longer beg._

_Pain pain pain pain please stop stop please stop why would anyone do this? WHY WOULD ANYONE DO THIS?!_

“ _Conversion at 70%!”_

“ _What did I say about holding him down?! I just got punched in the jaw!”_

_Did they ever wonder who he used to be? Did they care? Where he'd come from, who he lived with. Friends. Family. Their faces were stripped away piece by piece._

“ _The avatar is responding!”_

_For a moment...a fleeting, insignificant second, he could see himself. He saw through gold tinted lenses a table surrounded by scientists with a hysterical person lying in the center. The two of them could scream together, and then a scientist blocked his vision and turned it black._

“ _Conversion at 99%!”_

_The screaming ceased._

_His vision flared up again in brilliant gold. How long had it been? There weren't nearly as many scientists as before. Where had he gone? He was no longer lying on that metal table. No...no of course not. He could not see himself. What a ridiculous idea. He was here._

_There was a voice above the confusion, calm and even._

“ _Tell me what your name is.”_

“ _V...Virgil...” He was so tired..._

“ _Any recollection of a last name?”_

“ _No...I don't think so...” Who was asking him these questions? He couldn't turn around to see._

“ _Where were you born?”_

“ _Born?...Oslo...we moved to the states when I was...I was...I-I don't know.”_

“ _Do you know any song lyrics?”_

“ _...pardon?”_

“ _Song lyrics. Do you know any?”_

 _He thought, but everything was floating in a fog. He took the tunnels in for work, and there had been that one song over the speakers._ “ _I think...there's one...time...time and time again...you...you will be my only...it plays on the trolley.”_

“ _I see. Thank you, Virgil.”_

_Where was he going? He could hear the man behind him walking. Who was he speaking with?_

“ _These are the maps to the areas that hold the personality we need. Everything else can be wiped, but do it three-hundred files every hour with thirty minute recess between. The last core burnt up and had to be wasted when we dumped everything at once. Nearly set the lab on fire. 'She' needs to have her emotion protocols minimized when we've put her online, so make sure that those are cut as well, or they could imprint on her.”_

“ _Yes sir.”_

_Virgil heard the second man approach, but still outside of his line of vision. He couldn't move. The scientist spoke to him calmly, though, the sound of pen to paper taking up any previous silence once the other had left._

“ _How are you feeling right now?”_

“ _I'm...I'm really tired...can I sleep?”_

“ _Yes. Take a nap.”_

“ _Th-thanks...I appreciate it...”_

_Darkness._

_No no no no no no. He wasn't supposed to...he wasn't supposed to remember this. This wasn't his. Take it back. He was happy not being him!_

_TAKE IT BACK!_

_NO!_

 

_\---------_

 

The screaming died down into an inhumane crackle of static, indicating that Virgil's voice had been shot and only seconds later the glowing gold light of his eyes dropped offline. He went limp in the grasp of the claws, GLaDOS dropping him to the floor like one would drop a can into a trash bin. Quick, unsympathetic, and with fleeting purpose.

“ _ **He was right about one thing. When you finally do earn your cake, you can thank him for volunteering to step down for a far more superior achievement.”**_

Mel dropped her gun, the one device in the mad circus of Aperture that kept her life hanging by a thread,. She dropped herself down the small dip in the platform, landing beside Virgil and reaching out to grab him, but recoiled her hand when it came in contact with a stray electrical surge that left her hand feeling numb. The bright yellow liquid spilling out from under him came dangerously close to her feet, Mel knowing enough that if she touched it she would be electrocuted instantly. She couldn't reach him. Had he been human like herself, there would be nothing barring her from holding him close and seeing what she could do about his vitals, but he wasn't. He was a machine. A highly advanced machine from an age she did not belong in, and the walls only stacked themselves higher the more she realized how much she had gotten by on his word alone.

She grabbed at her head, clenching her neglected red hair between her fingers and sunk into a crouch far enough that her forehead pressed tightly against the cool tiles bellow her. She wretched, a single chocking sound allowing itself freedom at the sob that gouged its way from her gut. Through the throbbing in her head and the pit in her stomach, one voice rose above it all. Cold...collected in the chaos...inhuman.

“ _ **If you are done making a mess, I can present you with the options you do have. Keep testing towards your freedom or suffocate. Your choice.”**_

And it made her so angry.

Mel turned her face up at GLaDOS, her bangs draped over the crease of disgust and hate that drew her mouth down into an wolf's snarl. The central core found herself jerking her head back involuntarily. This was new. She had never once, in all of her years of testing, seen anything like that expression. Not from anyone, not even the tenacious test subject. It touched on something other than the anger and defiance she only had a primal understanding of. It was fascinating. It was frightening.

It was mourning.

Mel got to her feet, passing under GLaDOS to pick up the portal gun. What could she do with it if there were no white walls inside the chamber. SHE had made absolutely sure of that this time, especially around very specific buttons. Out of sheer curiosity, GLaDOS leaned her body in, watching Mel's every move as if she was hypnotized. The rash, fearlessness of her every step should have been cause for concern. There had been no calculation in her movements. No thought. The gun was lifted, but was held in a way that did not ever signify that she meant to wear it. Actually, you just don't hold it up like that...or recoil it back.

Oh.

GLaDOS retreated too late, the portal gun being thrown point blank in the direction of her chasis and catching her dead in the optic. Her vision blacked out, the broken glass shooting a fire of sparks to the floor as she screamed. It wasn't often that GLaDOS was on the receiving end of pain, let alone something as unexpected and _insane_ as having a portal gun thrown at her like it was a heavy-weighted tennis ball. The scream she had produced was like nothing any human could accomplish, reeling back as the portal gun fell to the floor and surprisingly undamaged by the impact.

“ _ **You LUNATIC, vile creature! What is wrong with you?!”**_

Mel didn't have the faintest idea of what she planned on doing after her outburst, but she wouldn't need to think for too long. While GLaDOS was pulling herself together to start pumping gas into the chamber, the panels bellow Mel's feet started to shift. At first, she might have thought it to be GLaDOS herself and the effect she had on the chamber while under attack, but she would not have left a hole in her floor if she meant to suffocate Mel out with poison. Mel gasped as she saw Virgil disappear, the black floor panel his body occupied sinking beneath her line of vision into the nooks and crannies of the facility bellow.

“ _ **What is happening?”**_ GLaDOS sounded absolutely beside herself. Confused, enraged, and worst of all, out of control. She could not see, through her optic at least, but her sensors were blaring to alarm in her head, showing her not one, not two, not even three artificial lifeforms beyond the walls. They were surrounded, each individual adding to the chaotic fog that now surrounded the chamber and moving the panels to their liking.

Mel felt the panel bellow her sink, unable to stand and falling to her knees as GLaDOS disappeared from sight until there was only darkness. The woman found herself blind, but only momentarily. A red light flared to life along a long, narrow corridor others like it flicking on in step further down to show just how far it reached. Out from the darkness called an unfamiliar, but distinct voice.

“RUN!”

Mel didn't question the voice she heard. Whatever it was, it had been on her side and she took off like a mare out of the gate.

“Down here, pretty lady!”

“No, that is the wrong way! What is the matter with you? Take a left!”

“Ah, yeah actually nix that! Do what he said! He's right!”

“Of course I'm right. Now left!”

Mel faltered in confusion, but once it had been established which cross-hall to take she made a sharp turn and followed the voice. There were two...no, there was more than two. There was an entire squad of voices arguing amongst each other which directions to give her and it slowed Mel up. The first voice that had spoken, deep and thick with a western slur she was more than familiar with, rose above the others and shouted down to her one last time.

“ALRIGHT! Y'all are confusing the gal! Look, beautiful, just jump down that chute beside you and we'll take care of the rest.”

Mel shook her head. The second voice that had been arguing with the first one earlier on piped in with an abundance of articulation to every syllable, as if to show off. “Allow me to reiterate. What my colleague here means to say is, if you take the chute...yes, yes that square hole beside you, very good...If you take that it will lead you to our headquarters. SHE will not find you there and we will help you. You seem to take rather genuine concern in listening to disembodied voices, so take our advice before she catches up.”

“You are in a pretty small space, honey. She'll choke you out as soon as she figures where you've gone to.”

She didn't have any other choice, other than standing in bemused wonder at the speaker where the voices were coming from, a static of background conversation muffled behind the two primary speakers. Mel tucked her legs into the air vent and hoisted herself inside, hugging her arms and gasping as she plummeted into utter darkness once again. The space was confined, but she slid along the smooth metal on her back at a speed that swept her bangs from her eyes and her. Not wanting to bump anything outstretched at the velocity she was sliding, Mel tucked her arms and legs in as tight to herself she could and kept her head down. The thrill of the ride faded over time, however. The descent, as quickly as she was falling, was taking ages.

_Poomf!_

Mel dropped out of the air from the chute, the wind getting knocked from her as she landed flat on her back against something soft, but firm enough to force an ache in her tail bone and shoulder blades. She lay there, dazed and too winded to properly catch her breath after such an adrenaline rush. Pipes lined the ceiling surrounding the chute she had dropped from, barely visible in a dim, red light somewhere outside of her current field of vision, but would soon be disturbed by a brilliant green light. Mel squinted her eyes, putting a hand to her brow to shield them from being exposed to something so bright after several minutes in a pitch black funnel.

“Damn! She's even prettier than the last one! You know, gorgeous. I happen to have quite the preference towards red-heads. Reminds me of fire. Which reminds me of explosions! You've got explosive looks, if you don't mind me sayin'.”

Mel blinked. She wouldn't have had a response to that even if she could speak.

It was more than obvious to her, now that this was, indeed, a personality core talking with her. It was only moments later that a second one came into her vision, a lavender purple to counter the lime green of the the other core's optic.

“I suppose there's no use in asking you to quiet down the absolutely ludicrous flirting, now is there? So allow me to be the one to remind you that you are a ball with a greater likeness to an armadillo than something she would be interested in.”

“Hey, hey now Johnny boy, I'm just giving her a compliment.”

“Hm. Right.” The purple-eyed core turned his full attention on Mel for the first time since arriving, looking far more indifferent than the enthusiastic green personality construct beside him. “Mel, is it? Pardon my... _friend's_ crude excuse for a welcome. We've been informed you can't speak so I will take care of any basic questions you might have. You are currently in the core belt. The once running manufacturer for the personality constructs of this facility. I am Onathan the Ego Sphere, and this is the Adventure Sphere--”

“Name's Rick.”

“Rick.”

“And his name's Jonathan. Don't listen to that missing J bull that he's been trying to push on us. If you really want to be on his friendly side, though, you'll call him Johnny like I do.”

“She can't call me anything, you oaf.”

“Oh, right. Sorry, Freckles. Hope that wasn't a sore spot.”

Mel sat up, pressing a hand against the soft cushion bellow her and realizing that the surface she had landed on was an old mattress with holes chewed into it by the lab's pests. There may have even been one still inside, but she was thankful for the smooth fall. She wasn't sure her boots would have held up at such a drop of that magnitude. The room was lit with a single red bulb sticking out of the side of a wall at the far end of the office space, a large window looking over a long conveyer belt of core hulls. Several management rails ran through the office into core sized openings in the wall, and along them flashed a color for just about every spectrum of the rainbow, and all blinking down at her with intense fascination and curiosity.

Hell, there was on optic that actually _was_ a rainbow. Mel recognized him immediately as the core Virgil had taken a shine to.

Mel felt the cold, clammy hands of some invisible force enter her chest and squeeze her heart at the reminder. His scream resounded as a never ending white noise in the back of her head and she looked up to the two cores that had spoken to her desperately.

“W-what does she want? I don't--” The ego core, as he had titled himself to be, shook his optic as it squinted at her. “You'll have to give us more than doe eyes if you need something, girl.”

“You idiot, she's worried about Virgil! The guy just got crushed.”

“Ah, yes, Virgil. Odd one, that maintenance core. What did I say not even a month's time ago? That he was going to wind up like that Wheatley fellow if he kept poking in places he shouldn't. Turns out I was right once again.”

“Don't be a prick and just tell the poor lady where he's at! Have some decency, for crying out loud!” The adventure sphere's hull rattled impatiently, his green closing to a thin line with how intensely he had been glaring at the other core.

The ego core, in turn, looked absolutely put off by being told what to do, but complied.

“I wasn't the one that grabbed him from the chamber, that was Glitchy. He has him in the room over. Bit of a dead weight, if you ask me. I don't know why we bothered. His avatar, in lack of a better description, is totally fried.”

Mel didn't stick around to hear them blather on any longer, picking herself up from the mattress and passing the other cores to the sliding door at the back, having to force the thing open from where it sat stiff and ajar from years of rust and neglect. It gave with a sharp, jagged screech and Mel nearly fell through with the weight she had put on it.

On the floor beside one of the computer consoles was the heap of hardware and baggy, tattered clothes that had been her friend. Glowing yellow liquid still leaked from the cavity in his chest, and above him shinning a white optic over the damage was a personality core that didn't look like he should have been functioning himself. When Mel entered, he turned with a surprised jolt. A battered, hopeless little ball of machinery that somehow managed to look better in comparison to the mess bellow him.

“H-he's fixed me...he's fixed all of us at one point or another, but I came to him often. I don't know if we can fix him, though.”

Mel stood by, holding her own arms cradled tight against her torso and biting her lip. Instinctively, she wanted to draw near. She put one, heavy weighted foot in front of the other, a hand hovering over the assist droid and carefully placing it over the arm of his jacket. The shell was cold, and no longer sparked with any kind of life. Whatever live wires had been kicking in to shock her earlier were no longer active and he was chill to the touch. She dropped back against the side of the console, lifting him with an effort she was willing to put forth considering his weight so that his head was at least rested in her lap. His hair looked remarkably real, but it was only until she put a hand through it to brush the stray locks from his face that she realized how doll like it really felt. She chocked back the lump rising in her throat, fresh tears warming her cheeks and flushing them to red.

Mel leaned in and tilted her head so that it was pressed to his, staying like that and her shoulders silently heaving under the influence of her uneven breathing.

Some of the braver cores snooped at the door, one from the back even sniffling. Rick, the green core from before, passed them and glared at the lot.

“Alright, alright, clear out. This ain't a show. Go back in there and wait until we got things sorted out with our guest. Just give her a minute.”

“The Adventure Sphere is bossy.”

“The Adventure Sphere is going to punch your lens out, Facto, if you don't git your metal butt back in that room.” The cores scattered under the scolding tone of the adventure core, though he stayed behind in the room with Glitchy and waited a moment for Mel to catch her breath.

Melt lifted her head, glancing at the limp hand that lay beside her knee and lifted it to inspect the usb port where a pulse should have been on Virgil's wrist had he been human. She pushed the flap up, hinting at a small space of smooth, white metal like her portal device that looked to be his structural plating beneath the synthetic skin. The port was what Virgil had used to contact GLaDOS back in the chamber in the junkyards. Perhaps if she could get some kind of connection to the computer...SOMETHING would happen. She didn't know what, or even how, but it had to be there. She waved at Glitchy, who lowered his optic to her level and hummed questionably.

“Hm? Yes, Miss?”

She pointed to Virgil's wrist.

“Oh, you want an USB cable? There's one on the desk in the other room. I would fetch it for you if I had the hands for it.”

She nodded her gratitude, laying Virgil carefully on his back and heading out to grab the cable. She tried to ignore the multi-colored eyeballs gawking at her when she entered, but took a fleeting moment of interest to notice that they came in all kinds of colors, and not just the optics. Some had the default silver hull, like the Adventure and Ego sphere, but others had personally painted shells in all sorts of patterns and designs, much like Virgil had. These cores...they had all been people once. Every single one of them a human brain forced against their will into a spherical computer. Questions continued to rise as to why they were all in one place and why they had helped her, but that would have to be saved until she was done with business.

Finding the port on the console she needed wasn't difficult, and with Virgil plugged in she waited. Waited for something. Waited for anything. A jolt, or a spark. The flash of the computer monitor or for him to make a sound. Mel bit down on her knuckles, sitting with her knees up to her chest and waiting anxiously for any sign of life.

Nothing. Not even the faint hum of a fan.

Mel took a note from her pocket, writing on it and Rick sliding further into the room curiously to see what it was she was doing. When she held the note up, he almost wanted to laugh at the concept had their situation not been what it was and managed to keep it down.

_Is there a mechanic core?_

“Sorry to say, but he's the one on the floor. Virgil's in charge of core repairs around here. The only one that could fix him is...well...him.”

“And HER.” Glitchy added with a shutter.

“And HER, yeah, but fat chance of that happening. You two pissed her off pretty good back there. Did you seriously throw your portal gun at her?”

Mel nodded, but her eyes were still fixated on the broken assist droid.

“That might just be the most hardcore thing I have ever seen in my years of Aperture Science! You can't make that crap up! Hoo boy!” Rick flexed his handlebars humorously, his lower lens lifting in a mock grin.

Jonathan was at the door, having been one of the cores to not get the privacy hint, and egged Rick on. “Yes, she is indeed quite 'pissed', which is all the more reason we should hurry this along and get to the point. Show that we have a method behind this madness.”

“Eh, Johnny boy's got a point there, Red. We don't actually have a lot of time. We got two cores down in testing droid repairs right now trying to talk P-body and Atlas over to our side of things, but if they can't come to an agreement She's probably going to send them after us. Speaking of, who's got tabs on Nigel? Hey, Chuck!? Where'd you put Nigel?”

A navy blue painted core called back from behind a broken window viewing the other much larger room full of cores. “We've got Nigel inside a weighted cube for a time out! We caught him trying to run off to tell GLaDOS where we've gone to!”

Said weighted cube sat on the opposite side of the room from them with its lid on and it jerked an inch to the side as a voice cracked out from the center, muffled and distraught.

“You're all crazy! If you're planning on rebelling I don't want any part of it! I like living, thank you very much! Once she hears about this we are all crushed!”

Mel stared the storage cube down, her blood running hot at the sound of Nigel's panicked voice and she left Virgil's side to storm over. She hadn't put her full trust in Nigel, but she hadn't expected for him to do something as horrible as sending them to GLaDOS. Mel had made the mistake of assuming all the cores were against her. It seemed a vast majority were, but the one little rat that had shown her otherwise would now get a good kick to the side of his box with her combat boots. The cube tumbled over so that it landed on a different side, Nigel groaning from within.

“Ow! Hi, Mel. Nice to hear from you too...”

“Woah there, Red!” Rick slid along the rail that came closest to Mel and the storage cube, grabbing her attention as best he could just as she was about to pick the cube up. “He has nerve and you've got more than enough reason to kick him around a bit, but lets save it for the real threat.”

Rebelling?

Mel looked up at Rick expectantly, the green core waving his optic too and fro with pride. “You heard the rat right, beautiful! See, up until the last guy took over we cores weren't aware that you could just boot GLaDOS out of her seat and plant yourself in the system to run the place. Any one of us would have laughed at the idea. Now, between that and seeing Virgil running around with you trailing behind him, we started to come to the conclusion that we may not be as useless as She would like us to believe.”

“Of course, we can't just shove one of our heads onto her body like the last time. It seems there is a deep coded corruption that takes play once there is a new host, and it happens quickly.” Jonathan added. “So it would be unwise to have one of us take over, even if we could decide who or if they had the capabilities to keep everything running. We'd be stark raving bonkers within minutes. Our best option, at this point, is to combine forces and see that she is shut down for good. Something we need a human to help us with. Button pushing, and all that.”

Glitchy, who's name fit rather well for the spark in his optic that caused him to twitch every few seconds, nodded his agreement. Despite looking rather run down, he was as determined as the rest of them, if not more. “We're done living under Her. One slip up and She has us flung into the incinerator. Virgil found a way years ago to reroute the incineration chutes so that cores were transported elsewhere instead of taking a burning dive and she still, to this day, has no clue it exists. There are cores here that owe him a thing or two and we're willing to help him finish knocking her out of power and get you out of here.”

Mel moved back across the room to sit on the floor with her legs crossed beside Virgil's android avatar, glancing down at the lifeless puppet. His eyes, though open, did not move and their warm, golden glow had long since disappeared, leaving dull gray slates. She reached out tenderly, closing his eyelids and taking the hand that held the USB port into her own.  It would be wrong to stop here. A slap in the face to everything they had done if she gave up.

He'd worked so hard.

Mel nodded up at the spheres. A gaggle of cores, one would say, and Rick spun excitedly. “HOO RAH! Alright, that's what I'm talking about! We got ourselves some muscle! If you're as reliable as the last chickadee that passed through here then we're in good hands, fellas! I better start coming up with some cool one liners for when we get to shutting Her off. I can't wait to see the look on Her face!”

“We're all very excited for you, but we still don't have a bullet proof plan yet, now do we?” The Ego core mused from the sidelines with a pompous tilt of his eyelid. Mel was already coming to terms with the fact that she didn't like him all too much. “Some of us aren't exactly capable of much, not including myself, of course. What do we have? A Music Sphere? We could lull Her to sleep. Rainbow Sphere? Paint Her a pretty shade of pink, perhaps. And what of Flashlight Sphere? She could temporarily blind GLaDOS, now couldn't she? None of us even know what Glitchy does. Glitchy himself doesn't even know what his programming's for. He could have been made as decorative furniture and we wouldn't know it.”

Glitchy's eye twitched, sparking in response to his annoyance but he stayed quiet.

Rick slid up the rail that Jonathan occupied and bumped into him, shoving the less than pleased ego core. “Don't be such a downer, Johnny! We've got this!”

Mel couldn't help but bite her lip anxiously.

_We've got this..._


	12. Chapter 12

Cores, to Mel, were a lot like birds. More specifically, they reminded her of the little black-birds she would see sitting on telephone lines along the road. They were lined perfectly in a row along their wire of choice and would do nothing else but squawk at each other. Mel glanced over her shoulder at the management rail that hosted the dozens of cores that had decided to follow her with Rick and Jonathan in the front leading the march, but had it not been for the one rail the sight would have been chaos. The different spheres bickered among each other in verbal discourse, their many colored eyes moving with their expressions and sending flecks of rainbow light bouncing around the dark catwalk between chambers. The woman stopped, absolutely cringing at the white noise and giving the adventure core and ego core the stink eye.

“Oh, what does she want now?” Jonathan was tailing just behind Rick, and when the two stopped another core from behind him was jammed right into the back of his hull. The other cores bounced against one another, unaware that they were stopping. This only caused more of an outrage.

Mel huffed, blowing her red bangs from her face. She pointed at Rick and Jonathan sharply, and then at her own feet for them to stay. Even if she didn't appreciate Jonathan's attitude, he at least had good communication skills. As for the other cores...Mel gestured to them in one wide swoop of her arm, then threw her thumb over her shoulder like a hitch-hiker.

As in they needed to take a hike.

Rick nodded knowingly. “Bit much, huh? Alright, I gotcha. Hey! Look alive, you jar full of marbles!” The adventure core turned around and shouted down the line of cores. “We can't all be in one spot, we're going to draw too much attention. Y'all need to scatter until further instructions. Ya got that? I'll get a signal out on our next move once we're done at the testing droid repair room.”

This was met with mixed results among the cores, but they eventually all turned onto different arms of the rail to disperse, even if it was done through snappy come-backs at the adventure core.

“Oh sure, now he's in charge.”

“Go occupy the mainframe if you're going to bark orders!”

“I'm lost. Which way were we heading?”

“Can't hear you from down here, Rick! Speak up!”

“Fact: The adventure core is a blowhard.”

“See you around, gorgeous.~”

Mel shook he head at the rainbow core as he passed her, but had been grinning all the same. She'd even felt a blush coming on from being complimented. It was a rare thing to be treated with genuine positivity in Aperture, with most robots being pretty cynical in one way or another. Even Virgil's kindness came with a grain of salt and a good sassing if you didn't meet his standards about 'being on one's game' and it took some warming up to him for the core to not insult her around every mishap.

Even with an army of cores at her disposal, she would have traded their company for Virgil's in a heartbeat.

“Is that better?”

Mel blinked, looking up at the green eye shining in her direction patiently. While she had been occupying her mind with the impossible, the line of cores had disappeared down different rails into the walls and passages of the testing tracks, leaving only Rick and Jonathan like she had requested. For this, she nodded thankfully to the adventure core.

“We've received feedback from testing droid repairs that the two cores we had sent with negotiations came back positive. Meaning, Atlas and P-Body are willing to give us a hand. Turned out to not be all that difficult. It seems she has gotten on even their nerves, or what little of them I had assumed they possessed.” Jonathan explained from the other side of Rick, and prompting Mel to keep walking as he gestured his handlebars at her. “No time to waste, girl. Keep moving.”

Mel exhaled deeply, wondering if she should have sent him off with the others.

The room they found themselves in after about an hour's trek from the core assembling line was not all the different from Virgil's repair wing, but much larger in scale and fixed above a giant catacomb of suspended testing tracks. The scale of the district was massive in comparison and made for an impressive view outside the repair room windows. It was areas like these that reminded Mel that the Empire State Building could have fit with room to spare inside of Aperture's walls. Thankfully the repair room suspended against the west wall was much more modest.

“Atlas? P-body? Are you two in here?” Rick called into the bleached white repair space, Mel stiffening at movement on the other end. Despite being told that the droids were now sided with them and no longer under GLaDOS' influence, her fight or flight instincts were instantly aggravated at the sight of them. Virgil had said the droids were harmless, but were they only harmless towards other robots? The tall, orange-eyed droid was the first to approach them and Mel took a step back. She raised her portal gun arm instinctively, even with no device attached to protect herself with.

“Mel, this is P-body. The short blue one's Atlas. I think you three already met a couple of times, though.”

Mel frowned up at Rick. Sure, a couple of times. The first time was when they kidnapped her and dragged her back down into Aperture and the second was when GLaDOS sent them chasing after her and Virgil. Neither of them very positive first impressions.

P-body trilled in high, mechanical chirps and ticks. They seemed to try forming words, but nothing in the English language if any. The tall droid shoved herself within Mel's personal bubble, and before the woman could stumble back she was grabbed up into a rib-squeezing hug....of all things, a hug?! She didn't know what to do, and she certainly couldn't say much. This had been the last thing she had expected, as well as the first hug she had received in literally decades. She was being hugged...by a robot.

“Aw, hey! She likes you!” Rick crowed from above, Jonathan stepping in to rain on this enthusiasm.

“They like everybody. Its not exactly a hard feat to accomplish.”

Mel felt her fear slide away into the white tiles bellow her, an awkward chuckle forced from her belly the tighter P-body squeezed. She raised a hand to pat the robot fondly, or perhaps she was attempting to tap out. Either way her rib cage was collapsing.

“Careful, you two. You know how fragile humans are.” Rick centered himself between the two testing droids, grabbing their attention when he pulled up a map on one of the computers. “Everybody see these two rooms on the monitor? The top one is the Central Chamber Maintenance Center. The bottom is GLaDOS' lair. There is a button in her lair that needs to be pressed at the exact same time as this lever is pulled up at CCMC. There used to be a phone the scientists used in emergencies to call this room up for a shut down if she ever got out of hand, but GLaDOS cut the line and gassed to place before they could reach the other line to turn her off. We won't have that problem. Now here's what I'm thinking.--”

“What _your_ thinking?” Jonathan purposely rammed into the adventure core to knock him away from the screen. “Bloody well presented, Richard, but this was my plan. You wanted to just blow the central chamber up, now didn't you?”

“Its still pretty solid.”

“Pretty solid if you want the rest of the facility to turn into one great crater in the ground.” The ego core narrowed his lavender lit eye at Mel and the two testing droids irritably. “What _I_ was thinking, thank you very much, was that we cores distract the top lady while Mel pushes the button in GLaDOS' chamber. Atlas and P-Body will stand by at CCMC to pull the lever. After that we need voice approval to fully put her to sleep.”

Mel raised her eyebrows at Jonathan, tapping a hand to her throat.

“Not from you, dear. Actually this is where we're a little stumped. See, the instructions are written rather crudely on this blueprint of GLaDOS' original core design from before the tenacious subject blew her up on her first go through the facility. The engineer that helped build her had it installed so that the voice approval matched his own. GLaDOS was only officially run globally through the facility in the year of 1998, the same exact day she gassed the place, but before then the scientists slaved over decades of trying to perfect and control her behaviors so that this wouldn't happen when she was set online.

“Lot good that did.” Rick chuckled bitterly.

“This blueprint...” Jonathan ignored him, obviously not appreciating being interrupted. “...was written in the 70s, so this engineer would be long gone by now. The file we fished up said that he was terminated for making grandiose demands over the work environment surrounding GLaDOS' construction. More notably, it seems he decided half way through the process that she should be destroyed and tried to sabotage the project.”

“So basically, we need voice approval from some bum mechanic that got himself the big ol’ boot.” Rick pushed Jonathan out of the way of the computer, this time, and started fiddling with it using the default short distance wireless they were equipped with. “We got the music core already at CCMC trying different voice samples to see if he can find a similar match. Nothing's come up so far, but that's all we're waiting on.”

A video came up on the screen, presenting an orange painted core with headphones fastened along the top of its shell behind his handle-bars. Mel peaked in on the screen curiously as Rick addressed the personality construct on the other end. “How's it coming over there, Music?”

The core shook itself back and forth. _“The turrets guarding the door saw me come in and have been expecting a concert of some kind. I tried explaining to them I'm here on business, but they keep singing and messing the samples up.”_

“ _Is anyone there?”_

“ _Oh...”_

“ _Hi!”_

The music core snapped, turning to stare off screen in the direction the turret's voices had come from. _“For crying out loud, be quiet! I'm trying to work!”_

 

\---------

 

She depends on you.

_> restoration.88%_capacity_//_

She depends on you.

_> function.maintenance_core_22a_online_//_

She'll go alone and never speak of this again.

_> name.VIRGIL_//_

We depend on you.

_> repairs.45%_//_

We depend on you.

_> time.12:12_8/16/9999999_error_//_

She depends on you.

_> good_morning_aperture_science_//_

 

He could hear singing. The turrets often sung. The high, sweet, mechanical voices were far off, and they echoed gently to the office space.

Virgil opened his eye, the music fading in an instant so that the only sound to be heard was the soft ticking of a clock. Had there actually been singing or was he malfunctioning?

He let the silence sink in, the events preceding his awakening all starting to slowly seep back to him through drips of unorganized flashbacks to what should have been his death.

Both of them, apparently.

He had expected GLaDOS to trash him. He wouldn't have acted out if he thought survival was an option, and was basically Virgil's way of throwing in the towel. However, the memories of his conversion from core to human left a bad residue and he wondered what brought them on. And then there was the matter of why he was still alive...or HOW he was still alive.

It wasn't until Virgil searched for his arm functions, which had the craving to put a hand into his hair like his android normally did when distressed, that he realized he had no arms. He was back in his damaged core shell in the offices by Nigel's testing track and far from GLaDOS deadly grip. He didn't understand how this had come about, but he was feeling incredibly drained despite being fully charged. What could possibly make him so weary, other than the damage he'd taken to his core body when dropping into the junkyards a second time?

“Emotional fatigue...well how-w about that...?” The core croaked out loud bitterly, his voice byte processor back to being on the fritz from that stupid fall.

There was a lot for him to consider and he had all the space, silence, and time to do it in. He felt no rush, no panic or worry, or death breathing down his back. There was something safe about the seclusion of this one, small office but it was damning at the same time. It was a false sense of security, and he knew that very well, but for the love of all things Aperture branded he just needed some rest! No running, or screaming, or falling, or tagging behind the human. This place was quiet and he was alone once again, something he thought he would dread if he ever had the misfortune of experiencing it again, but for once it was welcomed.

Virgil didn't let the how and why confuse him into enjoying this. Last straw, cards on the table, hands down, he was fed up with _everything_. It wasn't like he could move anyway. He was stuck in this port with no one else around, so he could just sit there until the next test subject rolled around.

“Only this time, I'd ge-et on my management rail and bail.” Virgil found himself at the start of another of his verbal rants, subconsciously already being affected by not having anyone there to listen. “Things were so much simpler before this chaos. Its my fault, of course. I just had to fall off my rail li-ike some idiot and then had to get help from something that isn't just a ball. And then that something shut AEGIS down, and then SHE came back online...and then that something was dumb enough to come back and make my life complicated-d once more! Now I'm stuck...alone...again! Ahahaha! I'm right back to where I started! This whole chase was just one, big, pointless loop!”

He could already feel the guilt breaching behind his current train of relentless anger, the words spilling form his speakers to the floor and not only keeping his shame imprisoned, but let it grow until the moment it was strong enough to take over.

“Its not my fault she got dragged back in! It wasn't even any of my business! I should have just let her test and maybe GLaDOS wouldn't be so pissed and have let her go after a while. Or at least give her some of that stupid cake she keeps going on about, and I could have gone back to work! Now I'm stuck in a dark office talking to myself. The human is probably either dead or on a testing track on her way to being dead because we went and pissed off a psychopathic, mass murdering computer! So no one is happy! Not me, not GLaDOS, not Mel--”

He stopped and flinched, his eye widening when he felt that similar pain behind his optic that he had when he found the human lying on the ground by the car, exhausted and hungry from hours of running Aperture's labyrinth. Once he had said Mel's name out loud, he realized he had been purposely distancing himself from feeling for her the same way he had done with the human that died to bring him online. It was hardly a different situation. Yet another mortal creature caught in the facility's web that suffered to feed science.

_Because you care._

God, why did he have to care? Caring was the worst and it stung and festered. How was it considered a positive trait when all it did was cause its host harm? Shame was just as bad, and he could feel it creeping up on him at full force, changing his mindset drastically and reminding him why he had survived long enough to be having this internal struggle with himself to begin with. In fact, he was going to look into why it was he was even in his core body right now, alive, well and out of danger. Who's hand did he have to shake for saving his hull this time?

_Mel's._

Yup, there it was. He knew it. Once he had calmed down and wasn't being an ungrateful little cockroach, he tracked the data highway all the way back to the core belt where his assist droid was plugged into one of the consoles. If that wasn't Mel's doing, than he couldn't think of anyone else.

“You're just that clever, aren't you...?” He sighed, feeling like he did before the woman had found him. Basically, like garbage. That was just it, though. He didn't do all of this just because they had saved each others' lives. He did it because Mel made him feel like he meant something. Like his programming didn't have expectations of him and told Virgil that he could do whatever he wanted and that she was there to support him. He'd done it because she had listened to him and either took his advice seriously or found his sarcasm funny.

Virgil's optic wandered to the pink and yellow pieces of paper wadded into tiny balls on the ground, a mark of where the human once stood and adding to the trail of colorful notes she'd dropped through Aperture. He narrowed his lids. Mel was the only good thing that had happened to him in this place, and she still needed him. He didn't want Mel to die. He wanted her free and happy and away from here, even if he was stuck.

“You're getting out. I'm getting you out, dammit.” He concentrated, finding that his Wifi was back in full swing. If his android was at the core belt, then odds were Mel was with it. He didn't have cameras at the assembling line to check, but if he could reach the speakers...

“Mel? Mel, are you the-re? Can you hear me? I know that we'll chance her seeing it, but type something into the computer if you're getting this!” He waited by anxiously, his optic darting around the room impatiently for any kind of response. Had she already been gassed out or found? It was absolutely killing him that he did not have eyes on her and when there wasn't a response he began to inwardly panic. Finally, something was being buzzed through the mic on the other end, but that by itself was strange considering she couldn't speak. “Mel?”

“ _Virgil? Is that you?”_

Well, that certainly wasn't Mel. Unless she had magically gotten her voice back and she had really been an Englishman this entire time with just a really shapely figure. Virgil knew the voice well enough for this to not be a possibility, if even a ridiculous one. “Glitchy? What are you doing there?”

“ _Don't ask me what I'm doing here when you should be dead. Where are you being patched in from? I'm literally looking at your broken assist droid as we speak.”_

“I'm in my core avatar at Nigel's tag track stationed in a charging port. There was an emergency back up when I got plugged into the computers down there. It wasn't a lady human with red hair by chance, was it?”

“ _Mel was here, yes. We pulled her from the central chamber and hid her here for a while.”_

“We?”

“ _Myself and most of the other cores...or those who could be bothered to help, at least. She's not here now, though. She's gone with the others to see what to do about GLaDOS and asked me to stay behind to see if your droid were to come back online.”_

Virgil was, admittedly, a little shocked by this news. He wouldn't have ever imagined their population of personality cores would do something so bold, and he only ever stepped out of line because he had Mel to help him get away with it. “That's...incredible!”

“ _You're welcome.”_

“For sure!” Virgil laughed and it cleansed him of the anxieties that barked his relief back into a corner so that he could now relax, if even a little bit. Now that he knew Mel was safe, and most likely working with the other cores on a battle plan, it was his turn to step up. “We're taking on GLaDOS, right?”

“ _That's an accurate assumption.”_

“Then we're going to need my wifi. Glitchy, can you help me? You'll have to do exactly as I say...”


	13. Chapter 13

Chapter 13

 

“Mrs. Melanie Thompson--”

There was a pause, her white-gloved hand leaving the tight fabric of her pencil skirt to rest on the smooth mahogany desk, striped with the yellow sunlight that escaped the blinds of the window before her. She had recently done her lips in a scarlet red, and remembered not to chew them for the sake of the lipstick she would have had on her teeth if she were to. The man on the other side of the desk had been staring at a folder, but looked up as she subtly gestured for his attention.

“Ms. Flanagan. I've taken back my maiden name recently.” She corrected him politely, and straightened her back to sit up once again.

The man reached for his thick rimmed glasses, taking a closer look at the personal file and squinting to see if what he had read was right. He had read the name correctly as it was, but that did not mean itself was correct. “Oh, my apologies. _Ms. Flanagan_. There's been a mistake in your profile. It appears my secretary has not been doing her job again.”

Mel kept her hands folded nicely in her lap and gave him a shallow shrug of the shoulders. “Accidents happen. I haven't yet changed my name through my bank either. I don't mind.”

“I do. She does this often and she uses our lines to talk to her craft club during work hours.” The elderly man stood, keeping the folder in the grasp of his leathery, aged hands and skimmed through his guest's neat and simple handwriting while he moved to a cabinet behind his chair. “Last week we had an award winning firehouse chief in here to volunteer for this project and my secretary got his name mixed with that of an air force general we had by the same day. If she wasn't my sister-in-law I would have fired her ages ago.”

He took from the cabinet a crystal bottle of amber liquid, along with two matching glasses and offered one to the woman. “Scotch?”

“Yes, thank you.” Mel accepted the drink, waiting until the man in the dark brown suit had taken his seat before sipping at it quietly, breathing harshly through her nose a moment but keeping a well practiced poker face until it had been washed down.

“You know I listened in on the radio for that that run. My family did. Bronze medal. That is impressive, if you don't mind me saying, Ms. Flanagan. You've been the only Olympian through here that has won anything. I suppose anyone else thinks their too much of a hot shot for this sort of volunteer work.” He leaned back in his seat with his glass, not yet having drank any but scratching at his white mustache thoughtfully. “Would you mind if I asked your motivation?”

“Not at all.” Melanie smiled back, and after her third sip she set her glass down atop a coaster on the desk. “I've been following Aperture Innovator's accomplishments for about two years now. Science was always my favorite subject in school while I was growing up and my father had taken an interest in it through me, so we would read magazines on Aperture's progress. When I heard about all of this commotion with national heroes and athletes signing up for donations I figured I might have a chance at applying.”

“Sound reasoning. You are more qualified than most that have come through here. We are looking for the best of the best. You are certainly one of them. Now, the mines that our new facility will be built in are still in construction and won't be done for some time, so chances are whatever test they will be giving you will be psychological rather than physical, but you will most likely be called upon again once our test chambers are completed for a full track run. Its out in the middle of nowhere Michigan, with a classified zip code, so you will be flown there by one of Aperture's private jets.”

“Private jet?” Mel leaned forward some in her chair with her left ear tilted in the man's direction, as if to hear him better. “How eccentric! You'd think I was Mrs. Bess Truman!”

“We folks over at Aperture don't like to cut corners. Mr. Johnson is taking us above and beyond what was once deemed impossible in the name of science. You'll be taken good care of over there. Now, what was it you planned on putting your donation money towards?”

Mel had an idea of what she was planning to do with Aperture's money from the start. There had been an animal rescue she volunteered to work for as a teenager whenever she had the downtime between chores and her school's track team. However, her father's recent influences had another plan for what it could go into. Something, as he had put it, that would be of more 'use'. He was not aware of the limitations that Melanie faced on her contract, or hadn't cared. She hoped to try, anyway, to avoid further conflict. “I had a specific animal sanctuary in mind, but I was wondering if a small fraction of the money could go into my family's farm. Is that in anyway possible?”

“I'm sure we can come to some kind of small agreement.”The man in the dark brown suite stood, offering his hand over the desk for Mel and prompting the lady to stand up as well with a wide, eccentric beam of enthusiasm blushing her cheeks. She took his hand in her own and gave it a firm shake. “As long as you keep testing your friend stays here.”

Mel's face dropped, her brow creasing quizzically. She opened her mouth to question the gentlemen, only to choke on words that would no longer come and she used her free hand to grip at her throat.

“ _ **I will not crush him. I will not incinerate him. He will remain safe. From you, of course, since you are the one that's put him into this mess to begin with.”**_

The dim office that once smelled faintly of cigar smoke faded to black, the man and all that surrounded him no longer there with a voice that had not belonged to him or Mel. It would not have belonged to any human alive. It rang with metal. A monotone drawl that cracked with static if even the smallest pitch fell out of place of such disinterest. The only thing that could be seen in the vast void of darkness was on what she could only presume was the ground, and it was that of a puddle of neon, glowing gold liquid.

“ _ **How sad.”**_

 

**\---------**

 

“Hey, Red!”

Mel opened her eyes with a start, her head leaning uncomfortably against one of the tall windows of Atlas and P-body's repair station from where she was sitting in an equally uncomfortable plastic chair. She had been distraught upon being woken up, and almost lashed out at Rick with her arm, now equipped with the orange-duel portal device P-body had been kind enough to lend her for the time being. The adventure core moved out of the way just in time not to get hit, glaring when she had calmed down and he felt he could come closer. “Woah! Watch where you're swinging that thing!”

“Now's not the time to be dozing off, anyway.” Jonathan griped from a bit further down the rail from Rick where he was focusing heavily on the computer monitor in front of him. “What if we were suddenly gassed with neurotoxin? We do not have the sense of smell to warn you with, girl.”

“We've been in here for hours, Johnny, she can have her little lady break. I'm only waking her up because you said it was important.” Rick countered, urging Jonathan to get to the point. Mel took a deep, shaky breath and sat up, not having realized she had fallen asleep and wondered for how long. Apparently long enough to reach REM, by what she had just experienced. The red-head held her arms and rubbed just bellow the shoulders as if she were cold and tried to ignore the sickening twist in her stomach.

“It appears Music Core has made a break through. He's found a match of the engineer's voice.” Jonathan stated.

The Music Core cut him off through the video on the monitor. _“That's right! After six hours and 55,476 samples I've found the closest duplicate. When the time comes, all I have to do is act as the stalemate and play the sample instructing GLaDOS to be shut down, along with any pesky reactors that might otherwise blow us up. The facility won't need to use as much power, so we won't have the threat of anything getting overheated.”_

“Of course, you'll be facing the bull head on once you are in HER chamber.” Rick cautioned. “And she will most certainly try to kill you. So after we've distracted her and triggered this button you will have to get to it quick, darlin'.”

Mel nodded her understanding, fully prepared for the fight in front of her. Even if it meant the cost of her own life, she was going to be sure that GLaDOS went down with her. No one should be subjected to the evil within these walls, whether you were a human or a robot. She had underestimated just how dangerous and crafty the main core could be, and it had cost her. It had cost _him_. It was only now that Mel realized how comfortable she had made herself with the laboratory, and if she did not have it in her to turn that back into fear then she was already dead. Virgil had been right about her staying. He saw her giving up and he didn't have any of it. It was her own complacency that had been her friend's downfall.

Mel searched her pocket, carefully pulling from it a creased up pink note with stiff, crude handwriting etched across that looked like it had been done by a child holding their pencil in their fist rather than between their fingers.

_Hello, Mel! :)_

Her eyes had grown foggy and distant in thought, the other cores seeing a drastic shift in her mood and studied her curiously, as if she were meant to write something down important, or maybe even suddenly able to speak. Mel's face twisted and flushed, the woman suddenly retching forward with her face in her hands and shaking.

The robots lost it.

“WOAH!”

“Fabulous job, _Rick!_ What did you say now?”

“You're the insensitive one! You must have set her off!”

“What is she even doing?”

“She's crying you idiot!”

“It was something Music Core said, then, obviously!”

“ _Me?! What did I do?!”_

“Hold on, I got this.” Rick recovered from his panic and tried his best to get Mel's attention without having the equipment to wave at her, let alone give her a tap on the shoulder. “Red? Miss pretty lady? Speak to me, kid! Are you sad about something? Maybe you're dying and in some kind of pain? Are we being gassed with neurotoxin after all? Is it your time of the month?”

“What in bloody hell does 'time of the month' mean? She's not a calender, Richard.”

“I honestly have no idea. I just know that the lady scientists used to not be happy about it.”

Mel's head spun too heavily with her lingering grief to hear what they had been saying. Excitable chirping and clicking could be heard on the other end of the room where Atlas and P-body had been minding their own business with nothing to occupy their interest until now. There was the hurried clanking of footsteps, and Mel would feel herself suddenly squeezed on either side by cold, smooth metal. She lifted her head, sniffling and tears rolling down her cheeks one last time after their abrupt stop, the human now being hugged by both androids. Atlas had even resulted to giving her some fond, though admittedly stiff, pats on her head.

It was comforting. Silly, but comforting. Enough of both, even, that she heaved out a sigh just as the corner of her mouth cracked upwards into an involuntary smile. Rick and Jonathan turned to each other after they watched Mel rest her head on P-body's side, both cores absolutely confounded.

“I guess they know something we don't.”

“Apparently so, but is she in any condition to be going into the central chamber or is she going to have anther one of _those_ episodes and get herself killed?”

Mel glanced up at Jonathan, her jaw tightening. She patted Atlas and P-body to let her go and she stood with her portal gun raised. A fire of determination burnt away the mist of tears from her eyes, while simultaneously making the blue in her iris icy in its wake. She gave Rick and Jonathan a sharp nod and headed for the door. Whether she blamed herself or not was neither here nor there. What they needed from her was what mattered right now. The sooner she got down to it the better.

After they watched her go, Rick turned to the testing droids for their cooperation. “Alright you two! Start heading to the Maintenance Center where Music's at. Make sure she can't see you! Atlas you'll have to do all the work as far as portals go since the human's got the orange gun. Everyone know what they're doing? Yeah? Good! Aaaaaaaaaaand _BREAK!”_

 

_\---------_

 

Aperture, in the state that it was in now since Mel's attack on GLaDOS, was not unlike that of a kicked hornet's nest and just as alive and deadly. Mel could feel a new weight in the air, the circuits of each wall brimming with rage, all extensions of the veins that ran directly from the central chamber. The empty space between Mel and the walls pulsed rhythmically, something the human could only feel in her core. Like thunder after it had grown silent and was rolling out. It was hard to fathom that something of this mass could possibly be alive. She was in the belly of some great beast and GLaDOS had only been its beating heart.

Mel didn't bother hiding. She was taking a straight shot to Her. She watched out of the corner of her eyes the red light of cameras following her as she walked by. She had the time to think back to the time she and Virgil spent down at the bottom of Aperture where she had learned that GLaDOS had once been human. Just another, normal lady, and one not that much older than herself. She had seen Caroline in newspapers alongside Cave Johnson long before she volunteered for testing and had never payed her any mind. She had always been in the background behind Mr. Johnson shaking hands with some important businessmen, or taking an interview. It had been something so simple. So mundane. Just to see that one, unimportant face among hundreds of others she had taken a passing glance at in her life to eventually become the very thing that was trying to kill her now. The chain links between then and now almost seemed impossible. Thin, at best.

She wondered if GLaDOS had any memory of her past self, or if she was as ignorant of her mortality like the majority of the cores in the facility. From what she had gathered, Virgil only knew about it because he went out of his way to be nosy and dug the information up by accident.

Mel came to a stop mote that had once been meant for toxic goo, but currently ran dry with the drainage pipes blocked off. It wasn't terribly far down, but it was far enough that she would have hard time climbing out and there were no white walls. She may need to re-route.

“ _ **Here. I'll get that for you.”**_

Mel instinctively froze when the even voice dropped down on her from all possible angles. Panels folded out of the walls to create stairs leading over the drained pool and up to a new catwalk. Mel's skin crawled with a chill, making the hard decision to fight her instincts and take a step forward. She climbed the stairs and continued up the catwalk, but just as steadily as she had before. GLaDOS had acknowledged her. There was no going back. She could see the entrance of GLaDOS' chamber, now, past a long corridor of windows. She wished she had a way of knowing that Rick and Jonathan were watching, just so she wouldn't feel so alone and that their plan would have no kinks in its chain. Alas, she would have to rely on faith alone here.

“ _ **So...now you are deliberately coming back to me. That's a first. I almost assumed I would actually need a turkey leg this time around.”**_

Mel approached the automatic sliding door, watching it split off and allowing her access into the chamber. The lights inside had been dimmed considerably, GLaDOS' impressive frame no longer stark and clear against the contrast of the dark panels surrounding her. Once Mel was inside she could see that the crushed, yellow optic she had shattered with her portal gun earlier had been replaced with a new one, though there seemed to be a small error with some of the lit pixels failing for a split second and turning to black in erratic places. She wasn't sure if it had been intentionally like that or not. GLaDOS, in all her mass, lingered above the small, fragile human with all the patient rage of a preying lioness. Mel stood her ground, the hand supporting the bottom of her Portal gun tightening its grip until her knuckles went white.

“ _ **But you aren't**_ **her** ** _, are you?”_**

Mel stared that burning, yellow optic dead on and shook her head.

“ _ **Funny. That's the first time in a long, long while that a human would acknowledge that I am speaking to them. And not while I am a vegetable. You really aren't like her. I suppose killing your friend got your attention well enough.”**_

Mel breathed in, her brow lowering further as she glared.

“ _ **If you've finally come to me to beg to be tested on, I have some sad news. Do you remember when you attacked me with your duel portal device like a little feral animal? After you did that I decided that I no longer want test subjects of your personality type. You are all too dangerous and too hard to kill. The only peace I have ever had was letting the tenacious test subject go free. I am now offering you the same chance.”**_

Whatever Mel had been expecting from the robot, it wasn't anywhere near what had just been said. Not even in the same ballpark. Her eye's widened, Mel taking a step back with her shoulders squared and shaking her head confusedly. It was too good to be true.

“ _ **I'm being serious.”**_ GLaDOS' tone had been driven towards an impatient annoyance. A lift a few yards from where Mel stood emerged from the pipes to lock into place, hissing as the door opened. _**“I don't want you in my facility any longer, you destructive little termite. I am not letting you free out of kindness. It is simply the logical thing to do and what will be best for myself and this facility. Take it and go.”**_

No. There had to be a catch. The lift could be trapped. It was a small, confined space controlled by GLaDOS herself to take her wherever the AI wished her to go. She could decide to smash the elevator once she was inside, or have the doors open up on a line of live turrets. The risks aside, Mel's job was not done. Running away from the problem did not fix it. GLaDOS was still online and waiting for the next poor soul to wander down here to be trapped in this dreaded labyrinth of madness. She couldn't have that.

Besides...a little revenge wasn't entirely a bad thing.

Mel slowly shook her head at the AI one last time, GLaDOS coiling back and the elevator disappearing into the floor. _ **“You may not be her, but you sure are as brain damaged. Maybe more. Just so you know, the other option still wasn't more testing, if that was what you were hoping for. I would take a deep breath.”**_

Mel had expected that much, and yes...she took in a deep breath and backed off away from GLaDOS as neurotoxin started to flood into the room through several vents in a sickly green haze. The woman held a hand to her nose, assuring herself even further that she could manage to hold it until the cores came to help her. Her eyes darted around the room, searching for any sign of them or the button she was meant to press.

“ _ **I know what you are thinking.”**_

Oh, this should be good. Mel raised a brow at GLaDOS. Please, do tell.

“ _ **You're thinking your core friends should be here to interfere again at any moment. Did you really think I was going to let my guard down a second time? I've locked all external access into the controls surrounding this chamber over the past several hours. Whatever it was you imbeciles were planning on doing, they cannot reach you now.”**_

Mel lost her breath, both her shock and a sputter in her lungs causing her to involuntarily gasp for the air that was now tainted with the poisonous gas. She coughed, the taste from the gas in her mouth sweet like powdered sugar and lingering at the back of her throat. Mel didn't have time to listen to GLaDOS any longer, and the cores weren't coming like they had planned. She turned around and ran to find a way back out of the chamber. The living panels that turned and shifted with the central core's mood were clamped air tight, Mel attempting to pry one loose at the edges or possibly search for some white wall in the distance past the chamber but all she could see was fog. Spots and lights began to appear in her eyes, dotting her vision until she could no longer see and her lungs felt as if they were icing over with a sharp, cold clamp. She tried pounding on the walls, hoping to get the robots' attention and let them know that something had gone wrong. All the while, GLaDOS had remained as calm as ever past all the chaos and panic.

“ _ **You should have taken my offer and left my facility alone. Goodbye.”**_

 


	14. Chapter 14

A crowd of cores gathered around a large screen at the core line since it was the only office that had enough management rails to host so many personality spheres, the large computer covering most of the back wall and acting as their window into watching what had been happening in the chamber. While most of the cores could only watch Mel struggle helplessly, Rick and Jonathan had made themselves busy with trying to get past the firewall GLaDOS had set around her chamber. While smaller technical functions they could perform, neither had been built for this type of operation and both were panicking under how badly they had been failing at attempting it. Some slid over just as panicked, but not of anymore help than their friends. Others were just making useless commentary.

“Hey, uh, Rick? Is our human supposed to go limp like that?”

“Humans can survive in a room full of neurotoxin. But not for very long.”

“Are we gonna need to get a new one?”

“SHUUUUUUT UP BACK THERE!!!” Rick turned sharply at the other cores, a rainbow line of eyes blinking widely at him and immediately going quiet. The Adventure core continued, having worked himself into into enough of a hysteria that his voice module was cracking. “If anyone—and I mean _ANYONE_ here is at least decent with hacking firewalls then GET YER BACK CASING OVER HERE! If not, the rest of you shut your traps until we've got things sorted out!”

“Oh, I think I might have--” Jonathan started, looking rather pleased with himself from where he was hovering over the much smaller computer on the opposite end of the room from the other cores, but his eyelids and handles quickly fell and he shook his optic. “Oh, no no that was just the password into a game of Tetris. If all goes pear-shaped from here, at least we can have some good old-fashioned fun with block stacking.”

Despite his obvious sarcasm, there was at least one core in the room that verbally agreed to that being a good plan. It wasn't what Rick wanted to hear, though, and he stared down the line of cores in frustration. “Really? No one? Not a single one of you wants to take a whack at this firewall? Don't get me confused, here. Its not a real firewall or I would have dealt with it already!”

Through one of the square cut-outs in the wall made around the rails for core access, a white eye lingered into the room, shining his optic around for a moment and observing the chaos. “What's going on in here? What are you all screaming about?”

“Glitchy's back!”

“Where have you been? Were you not supposed to stay here with that broken android? Couldn't help but notice it was not gumming up the floor any longer upon our arrival. Can't even get that right, can you?” Jonathan turned away from the computer once everyone's attention was focused on Glitchy's return instead. It wasn't a hard thing for cores to be distracted, and there was too much going on at once for anyone to stick to one task in a hot situation like this.

Glitchy's upper eyelid came down, the core trying to decide whether to be indifferent or annoyed. Deciding that he was better than Jonathan as far as manners were concerned, he made the calle to ignore him and turned to Rick instead. “You said something about a firewall? What's it for?”

Rick nodded at the monitor where Mel sat curled up against a wall, her jumpsuit collar pressed tightly around her mouth and nose and struggling to keep awake.“Well, our human ain't doing too good right now. She's getting gassed as we speak. GLaDOS figured out what we had planned and put up a barrier to prevent us from screwing with her chamber.”

“Right. Give me a second.” Glitchy answered calmly. There had been a small square about the size of a silver dollar crudely taped to the side of his hull, a violet light at the top blinking to life where it sat beside a thin, black antennae of a sort. He began to speak, but not to anyone in the room. “I'm back at the core line and it appears they've already begun. _SHE_ has placed a firewall around her chamber, however, and making for difficult access.”

There was barely a moment's pause before the small speaker on the device pushed passed the hiss of static on their end. The cores that hugged the ceiling all went quiet and looked on with absolute bewilderment. “ _I can deal with that. What about Mel?”_

“Being pumped full of neurotoxin.”

“ _WHAT?! That's the first thing you should have mentioned!”_

The control room for the central chamber was, for the moment, a hub of a very strange mix of Aperture branded robots. Firstly, three turrets who stood sentry at the door, though their magazines had been emptied long ago and no longer possessed a threat to anyone who entered and spent their days singing to one another. There was the music core, who had been in the cramped office for the past few hours running voice samples and scolding the three turrets who constantly insisted on interrupting him in hopes of having a fourth vocalist to join their band. P-body and Atlas had been some of the newest arrivals, though their initial purpose for being in this location was now reduced to standing patiently in a corner until given further instructions. Then finally, there was the maintenance core wearing his newly repaired assist droid body and gripping the edges of the control panel as he spoke into a device clipped to his jacket that was very similar to the one Glitchy possessed. The defective core on the other end was less then appreciative with Virgil's sharp tone.

“ _Look, you can bark at me about irrelevant details or you can save the girl. You've got seconds by the looks of it, Virgil.”_

“ _Virgil?! He's alive?!”_

“ _No, Rick. I'm speaking with his mechanical ghost.”_

“ _That makes more sense.”_

“Urgh...!” Ignoring the voices coming through the small speaker on his jacket, Virgil turned to the single console in the office and stared at it long and hard. He concentrated, picking apart the intricate coding within his his mind's eye. Quite literally, the numbers were shown to him in a simulated physical form right there in front of him.  He traveled through Aperture and to the dark, misted haze that was _Her_ chamber. Information was being fed to him faster then a human's brain could process light, and then he jerked when it all came to an immediate halt. The firewall that had been described to him sent his vision black for a few seconds and made the assist droid pull back in surprise. It even made him feel sick. He had no idea he could be sick! The assist droid crossed his eyes and held is head. “OoOOooooh jeeeeez...”

“Something wrong?” The music core spoke up from just behind Virgil, having been patiently standing by and letting him take control of the situation with the assumption he knew better.

“I think I just got a piece of whatever crazy made that intelligence dampening sphere go rampant.” Virgil quickly gabbed for the console again, having to keep his balance. “That stuff is strong! What in the world is it?! Its not even mechanical its...its organic!” Much like plant interference on the security scanners, though not entirely the same. It was alive and it was hysterical with anger. He didn't know how to override a firewall made of something that wasn't even fully weaved from a computer. Even so, he was by no means quitting.

_//cc.firewall_override_01000111 01001100 01100001 01000100 01001111 01010011//_

_//cc.firewall_override_01000111 01001100 01100001 01000100 01001111 01010011//_

_//cc.firewall_override_01000111 01001100 01100001 01000100 01001111 01010011//_

_//cc.firewall_override_01000111 01001100 01100001 01000100 01001111 01010011//_

_//cc.firewall_override_01000111 01001100 01100001 01000100 01001111 01010011//_

This input would have to be done up to fifty times every 100 US without him messing up a single figure, and hopefully while his wifi had a good connection. Even a single sputter would mean he'd have to start all over again and Mel didn't have that kind of time. For that matter, he didn't either. The harder he fought that black fog the woozier he felt. What a funny feeling, to be woozy. Not just the false human simulation of it, either. This was different in the way that his software had been attacked and even broken down into fragments for a split second. He didn't think he liked it all that much.

Ding! Access granted!

Virgil relaxed, clearing his head from the sticky, webby, noodly mess of coding he had to snap in half and grinning triumphantly. “Yes! Now we're talking! Okay, where's that neurotoxin coming from? That can go bye-bye. Mooooving this panel. And this one. Maybe this one. Get a fan going. Air out the place a little. Oh, _NOW_ She's trying to lock me out.”

Virgil reached for the talkie on his jacket again, alerting the cores of his success. “Hey, guys! I was able to breach the firewall but we only have a small window of time before I get launched back out of the chamber. We have to work fast!”

The adventure core responded.

“ _You did it!? Hey, guys! Get into gear!”_

A signal was launched from the old core line. Or, a mess of several unique signals would be more fair. A talkative, scrambled, hairy static of voices put out by nearly every core that had gathered in the small space and somehow managed to unite itself enough to move as a stringy ball of yarn towards GLaDOS' chamber. The main core was already beside herself with her firewall somehow being penetrated and watching in confusion as some of her own chamber parts moved by the command of a second party. The neurotoxin had not only ceased, but was being fanned out through the same vents it was meant to pore through. She could only blame the nearest person to her, and that was Mel, who was now nearly coughing out a lung and gasping for clean air as she sat herself up off the cold floor.

“ _ **What is going on? Is this what you wanted? Good job. You stopped the deadly neurotoxin, moved a fraction of my wall, and turned a fan on. How heroic. I'm almost disappointed. I was expecting something a little more original, but I suppose that's my fault. You know, as soon as I've fixed this you will be incinerated rather than painlessly inhaling gas. I was giving you the easy way out. Again. It seems that every time I offer you my generousness you decide its too good for you and throw it back in my face. I won't be making that mistake again.”**_

A claw moved with the purpose of grabbing Mel off the floor, when GLaDOS suddenly reared back with a sharp, inhumane wail the cracked and screeched like a metallic siren. The feed from the personality cores had finally reached her, over two dozen voices chattering inside her head all at once like they had so long ago when the scientists had tried hooking the spheres up to her body. Except then she could only host three cores at a time, herself not included.

Mel was hearing a voice too. While the signal from the cores had been silent to her human ears, there was one that was very distinct that spoke up over the AI's horrid screams of pain and confusion through some speakers hidden above the chamber walls.

“ _Mel! Get up!”_

The human test subject held her hoarse throat, the once sweet taste of neurotoxin now bitter and dry against the walls of her mouth and further back. The light in the room stung her eyes, but she looked around for the voice, half delusional and expecting its owner to be in the room with her. It was familiar enough not to be mistaken. The shape she initially searched for was a ball. No, now a human. Not a human., but a machine dressed like one with messy brown hair, glowing gold eyes, and an oil stained jacket three sizes too big for him to be wearing. As Mel searched the chamber, she watched as a wall moved and revealed a white podium with a big red button at the top.

“Mel, get up and press that button!” Virgil drove her on from the control room, watching from above through a live video now open in a side window on his desktop. “You can't fail us now! We're almost there! You're my Olympian and this is your final stretch!”

She did everything he'd asked her to. Even when she knew he was lying, there was something in her that wanted to believe that he was her best chance. That wasn't ending here. Mel pushed herself up, her knees shaking as she rose and threatening to give in. Mel locked them down, leaving her portal gun on the floor and using her now free arm to push herself away from the wall and sprint for the podium.

_“Yes! Yes! You've got it!”_

Mel had made it past the walls and into the small side room the podium had been in, her hand reaching out for the button and ready to punch it down for her end of the shut-down sequence. At the last second, though, one of her knees did decide it wasn't ready for physical activity of this magnitude and buckled on her. The woman gasped, falling forward and smashing the right side of her face into the long side of the button's podium, her head bouncing off before she hit the floor. With a bloodied nose, no less.

Glitchy, Rick, and Jonathan were acting as her audience back at the core line while the others were busy, and the three of them shuddered and narrowed their optics, physically wincing.

“Ooooooh...”

“Yeowza!”

“Maybe she only got Bronze for a reason.”

Virgil and Music didn't react too much differently, Virgil having the mouth to painfully grimace with and leaned forward to speak into his mic again.

“ _Uh... Just...walk if off, sport! Walk it off! We'll get you some cotton balls when this is over. Maybe some Advil.”_

Mel groaned, holding her bleeding nose with one hand and using the other to reach up and slap her hand against the flat top of the red button. The signal was sent to Virgil's desktop, the android turning in his chair and motioning an arm at Atlas and P-body.

“Okay, Atlas! Go ahead and pull the lever!”

Virgil knew well enough that if he didn't specify who would pull the device, the two of them would squabble over who got the chance and nothing would get done. This was proven when Atlas yanked the lever down with a proud chuckle while P-body stood off to the side with her arms crossed and pouting.

{I got to pull the lever!}

[You got to pull the lever...]

Music core slid up the management rail, hovering just over Virgil's head low enough that if he were to suddenly stand to his fullest height he would hit his head. As such, the android crouched down further to relieve space between him and his fellow core so he could have a go at the computer. “Okay, my turn! Turning Her off in 3 ...2...1..!”

The voice sample was played, just as planned, a human voice reciting three words through the speakers, though in a rather stiff attitude, or lack there of. For the music core, it was not supposed to matter. As long as they had the fitted voice and the words that had come with the instruction manual, they should have been golden.

_< Shut. Her. Down.>_

It was completely unnecessary for a robot to hold its breath, but the closest to it one could perform was freezing up like a statue and while they waiting in anticipation for GLaDOS to cease screaming and go limp. That was what was meant to happen, anyway, before she managed to fight off the cores and gained back control. Virgil could feel her growing stronger and thread by thread taking her chamber back, the firewall patching itself back together and some of the weaker core signals being booted out of the room already. The maintenance core turned to Music and gestured wildly at the console, starting to lose is cool again. “Why isn't it doing anything?!”

“I-I don't know!” Music's iris shrunk, the flat optic shaking in a panic as he searched for what went wrong. “Its a perfect match! It should have worked!”

“Well, it didn't! Try another one! Mel's going to get killed!” Virgil snapped as he ducked out from under the core and stood to the side so music could get in closer. “If its not that one it has to be one of the samples closest to it, right?!”

“I ran the voice through the computer fifteen times! I don't know how much more validated it can get and if it is the wrong one that means the computer's busted and we won't find the right sample anyway!”

Tension was rising. Mel sat up, holding her bleeding face, still, with her back rested against the podium and waiting anxiously for GLaDOS to shut down. Unfortunately, she could hear the struggle that was happening in the control room and she was growing ever more concerned. GLaDOS was gaining control and Virgil couldn't engage the shut-down sequence like they had planned. The only bright side she could see was that it was becoming more and more evident that his voice had not been one inside her head, after all, and that somewhere in the facility he was alive, well...and exceedingly irritated.

Back at the core line, a turquoise, wave patterned core blinked out of their concentration, looking around at his kind and shaking slightly. All but five of them had been kicked out of the central chamber, and the two who had put themselves in charge had been watching the monitor too closely to have noticed. The water-testing core squeaked fearfully and shuddered. He called out for their attention and just barely audible. “Uh...R-Rick? Jonathan?”

Rick was the first to turn around and acknowledge him. “What's up, Ray?”

“I-I-I think we're all just about washed up, if you catch my drift.”

“Aaaaaay! Its funny because you like water! Maybe humor core should take some lessons from you!” Rick guffawed, his hull shaking as he went into a laughing fit but winced when Jonathan turned around to ram into him, harshly. The ego core almost didn't care he was starting to gain a few blemishes from all the times he had to literally knock sense into the green-eyed core.

“Imbocile! He's saying she's just about freed herself! We'll be dead in an instant!”

“Oh...Well, I mean it was still pretty funny...”

Mel watched helplessly as GLaDOS' infinite screams finally came to a stop. The remaining cores were thrust from her mind and the voices cleared away at once. Whatever GLaDOS once was before the attack, this was a new AI entirely. Wrath seeped from every wire and crevice that made up her core body, her eye flaring up so brightly it had changed from yellow to a hot white. Her calm, cold demeanor had died with the remaining signal the cores left behind and only one thing in the chamber was close enough for her to spend her malice on. Violently shaking with rage and a loss of dignity, GLaDOS shot forward like a coiled snake with two mechanical claws shooting past her to grab Mel.

“ _ **YOU MONSTER!!!”**_

Mel was grabbed between GLaDOS' cold, metallic grip with the air being squeezed out of her and her bones screaming under the pressure they were enduring. Virgil had found himself in a similar mood to the the lady AI herself and grabbed music core down from his management rail in a fit, shaking the poor round robot back and forth. Though he was doing no actual damage to the core, Music cried out fearfully and was getting to be excruciatingly dizzy by the rash movement he was jerked around with.

“She's going to _die!_ Try the next sample, Music, or I'm turning you into a boom box!”

“I-i-i-'m te-e-e-elling you! No-o-o-othing e-e-e-else is go-o-o-o-oing to w-o-o-o-ork!”

In his desperate fit, and not completely in his own, logical mind any longer, Virgil had even slipped back into speaking his first language as a demand after Music insisted the job was futile.

“Bare få slått henne av!!!”

The console beside Virgil and Music beeped softly and the cores, round or otherwise, stopped to stare at it from over the assist droid's shoulder, both them and the other robots in the room growing very quiet.

The first thing to happen within the chamber, or to Mel's knowledge at least, was that all the lights had shut off and the room went dark. GLaDOS had the front of her hull aimed at Mel, and link by link, slowly began to lower like the children's toy that would collapse when a button was pushed. The test subject watched as GLaDOS' eye dulled, her head hung and growing limp. The wires that held the claws and bound Mel loosened, dropping her to the floor and the human rolling with her arms hugged against her aching, bruised sides. From where she was curled into a ball, Mel stared into the sleeping face of the felled beast, the front of GLaDOS' core turned towards her from where it lay on its side along the chamber floor with the rest of her body.

Mel breathed heavily, fighting the pain and letting go of her sides to roll flat onto her back and take a few, strong breaths. She closed her eyes, raised an arm wearily, and gave her audience of Aperture robots a thumbs up.

Music blinked at Virgil, the two more than stunned by the outcome and each core glancing sidelong at each other while they hovered over the monitor and watched Mel from afar.

“What...did you say?”

“I...uh...” Virgil ruffled his own hair, knocking the goggles that rested on top to the side and tried to remember what exactly it was he had shouted over the heat of the moment. “...More or less said to ‘turn Her off.’”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“You, um...going to explain why it is that worked?”

Virgil watched Mel lie on the floor of the central chamber, absolutely exhausted but obviously relieved to be alive and in one piece. Virgil turned his gaze from the screen to stare at the palm of his own hand, opening and closing his fist a few times as if he were testing his joints. “I think I'd rather not.”

 

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 _Credit to http://that-one-strange-geek.tumblr.com/_   _for helping me with that one Norwegian quote for Virgil!_


	15. Chapter 15

The floor was cool against Mel's back. She had always despised how cold and hard everything in Aperture had been with very little going for it when comfort was mentioned, but she welcomed this. She felt so hot, and the smooth tiles made for some relief. The human lay her forearm to rest over her eyes, keeping them shut and letting her breathing roll out from heavy, beaten panting to inhaling calmly and slowly. The danger was gone and they were free. There was no reason for her to rush herself from her resting place after everything that had happened. It was the first time since leaving Virgil's repair wing that she felt legitimate safety and she was planning to soak it in. This was a triumph. Their triumph.

After a short while, Mel heard footsteps approaching her from across the room. There weren't many in the facility that could mimic the sound of human movement other than herself, and P-Bod and Atlas were loud when they walked with their metal feet clanking against any and all hard surfaces. As the footsteps drew closer, Mel removed her arm from her eyes and stared towards the high, dark ceiling of GLaDOS chamber for a moment when a familiar silhouette leaned forward to blink down at her. The assist droid's glowing amber eyes and chest piece stood out in the dark of the chamber, illuminating his face just enough for Mel to make out a warm, fond smile. His hand was offered out for her, Virgil helping the human off the ground and to her feet. “Good work, Mel.”

She was unstable getting up, Mel using his arm to balance herself. Once she was sure she wasn't going to fall back over, all of her focus could go to the assist droid, her eyes searching him from his boots to the tips of his static head of hair. Mel could only shake her head. She had watched GLaDOS nearly crush him into two separate parts. He had been unresponsive no matter what Mel had tried. Virgil let go of her, a light coming into his eyes with enlightenment and he waved his hands around expressively. “I just had an idea! Um, what's that...that thing humans do? With your arms? You did it after I saved you from GLaDOS' testing track.”

He could see she was still in shock, the human holding an arm to her sore sides and staring through him with big, owlish blue eyes. Maybe if he demonstrated he would get through to her.

“Come on, help me out here! Its...its this thing!” Virgil pulled Mel to him, the woman nearly falling in her surprise if he wasn't there to keep her from the floor. The robot wrapped his arms around the back of her shoulders and gave her a squeeze, though being mindful that she was most likely hurting like nothing else after that showdown. Mel let herself rest against him, feeling the relief of another person holding her up. His inhuman weight made Virgil sturdy as a rock so that the only part of her that needed to help keep her there were her own arms when she finally returned the the affectionate gesture and hugged them around his back. Mel could squeeze him all she wanted, as tightly as she wanted, and it wouldn't matter. So she did, and didn't plan on letting go. Her chest heaved, the woman experiencing hot tears of relief and contentment for the first time in practically forever. She let her cheek rest against his shoulder, her eyes soaking the patch of jacket where she lay her face.

Virgil could only imagine through a thick, hazy fog of inexperience how Mel could have felt after he pulled the stunt that he did in this very room not too long back and how she had no choice but to watch. She had every reason to be angry with him. In a way, Mel was, but she had a choice to pick between anger and let it bother her or she could let go and be happy that he was alright and functioning. Virgil still felt that an apology would have been appropriate, if not appreciated. Especially after he had found doubt within himself questioning just how important it was that she was okay. “I'm really sorry, Mel. I think I've scared you enough for one life time, right?”

Mel could only lift one of her hands, curling her fist into a ball, and weakly pounding it against the shoulder opposite to the one she was resting on. She could kick his tin rear if she had the energy for it. Mel finally pulled away, wiping the sleeve of her arm across her face to get rid of both the tears and blood that stained her skin. She prodded the part of him that had been torn through and questioned him with her eyes, now weary with dark, puffy circles.

Virgil looked down, seeing the area of his jumpsuit that was still ripped up from the attack and stained with the cooling agent that had pooled around him, now looking more like dark, ruddy goldenrod paint with the chemical glow having faded away hours ago. “Glad you brought that up, because that reminds me that I need to thank you! You are one clever human, you know that?”

Mel shook her head. She couldn't quite follow what he was getting at.

Virgil raised his arm and pointed to his wrist. “You plugged me in at the core line, didn't you? After you watched me do the same thing earlier. I was able to transfer over to my core avatar still hooked up to that charging station downstairs. I had no idea I was even able to do that! I woke up down there and was able to get in contact with Glitchy—You saw him, right? Burnt up core with a white eye?”

Mel nodded.

“So, I got a hold of him while he was at the core line and then asked him to run down to my testing track and get the attention of my nanobot team so that we could be carried back to my repair wing where I was able to work on fixing...well, myself up, I guess. Not everything's fixed, obviously. My right eye is still busted up. Couldn't find a replacement for that. I think I've earned a bit of a limp out of this junky left knee joint, too.”

Mel smiled fondly, loving every second she got to hear this gabby-mouthed core speak again and she found a note in her pocket to write on.

_This body has wifi now?_

She'd noticed after all. It was true that he couldn't have hacked the firewall as effectively as he had if the assist droid didn't have the same qualifications that his core avatar was built with. Even in her exhausted state, Mel could see that her question had caused an uncomfortable pause between her and her friend. He would open and close one of his hands, curling in and out of a fist anxiously. He forced a smile, anyway, and held a finger to his head. “Yeah, I've got it in here. New feature I just installed with my nanobots. Um, except I had to...take it from my core body and...well, it wasn't easy to get to. There had to be some dissembling. In less words, I won't be going back to being a core for a little while. Not until I can take some time to get it put back together.”

Virgil had openly told Mel that he felt more comfortable in his core body than he did as a robot. In the heat of the situation, he had decided that his assist droid would be more useful to them and made the choice to stay that way. For that, Mel was deeply thankful. She wanted to find a way to express this outside of a simple, colorful note, but she could feel a weight in her head and thought that for a short moment she should rest against him as she walked, putting all of her weight against the android and startling him into almost tipping over. Virgil's brows raised suspiciously when she leaned to the right, reaching out to shove her arm. “Hey, this isn't the place for a nap. How are you doing that standing up anyhow?”

Mel nodded, but raised two fingers up at him to represent two minutes of rest. The android wasn't having it. “Mel, I want to get as far away from this chamber as possible. We can get you to a bed or something.” There was a handy feature in his head that let the core know when to not draw near something that was too hot. The incinerator was a good example, if an extreme one. At the moment, his thermal scanners were telling him that Mel was way too hot for what a human's body temperature should be. He moved his hand up her arm and to her forehead, waiting a moment and cringing. “You've got one bad fever, Mel. At least I think this is what this is. Come on, I know where we can get this poison leeched out of your system.”

Virgil helped Mel along and slung that same arm over his shoulder to help her walk. “If you liked Nigel's testing track than you are really going to like the medical bay.”

The tiny speaker on Virgil's jacket suddenly buzzed to life with static, the robot stopping a moment for him and Mel to stare down at it as Glitchy's voice spoke up. _“Virgil? You aren't messing with the central core's sleeping protocols, are you?”_

That was an odd thing to ask. He hadn't touched anything since breaking the firewall. “No? Why would I? You'd have to be insane to go anywhere near her sleeping protocols after what just happened.”

“ _Well, Music contacted us to say that he's still getting active thought waves from the mainframe. That should all be off.”_

“You sure its not just because we put her to sleep instead of a hard shut off? We can't do any more than that. We'll risk the reactors heating up.”

“ _GLaDOS is asleep. The mainframe isn't. Its still running at full capacity.”_

Virgil scratched his head, his eyes squinting at the talkie since he didn't have Glitchy's physical appearance to make faces at. “What does that even mean? How can it be awake when She's asleep?”

“ _How the bloody hell should I know?”_

The mainframe was separate from GLaDOS. Virgil was not enough of a fool to misunderstand that they were different from each other, but he had assumed it was in the way that someone's head was different from their hand. Both completely different parts of what was otherwise a shared mind. An extension of GLaDOS. For Her to be sleeping and the mainframe to still be running was unthinkable. Maybe they had been mistaken as to which one of them had been the hand and which had been the head.

Virgil turned to stare at the sad, drastically less menacing pile of chassis parts strung along the floor like a limp puppet. GLaDOS' venom had been milked right from Her fangs and without Her dagger sharp insults and flaring yellow optic to pin them with fear there wasn't a whole lot to look at anymore. In the state She was in now there wasn't too far of a resemblance to a pile of scrap metal. So why was there still a feeling of dread hung like webbing from the chamber ceiling. The android was uneasy, and by how Mel tightened her grip on his arm he guessed she could feel it too.

Glitchy called back to them, his voice louder now in the eerie silence between Mel and Virgil. _“There's something trying to override our last steps of action for sleep mode.”_

Virgil winced, but didn't tear his eyes away from the central AI. “Its trying to wake her up?”

“Actually, no. Its attempting to perform a hard shut off. While simultaneously searching for something. Its scanning the chamber.”

**Warning: Central Core is Offline. Alternate Core Detected.**

Virgil and Mel jumped, the speakers spooking them into taking a few steps further from GLaDOS, though the sudden voice was not Her's. Had the situation been different, in fact, they would have brushed the announcer's voice off as a casual presence within the facility. To hear its upbeat tone now, in the dark and quiet, was more than reason to fear for their safety. Though she had been startled, Mel was not fully comprehending what the chamber was asking of them, but Virgil knew better and he spoke back to Glitchy before the other cores got too worked up. He tried to stay calm but there was a nervous crack in his voice. “The mainframe is looking for a replacement core.”

“ _What about the hard shut down?”_

“It has to be a back up in case there are no other cores around. It would rather be upgraded or otherwise have a proper shut down rather than be put into limbo for another few years. That's just a guess, at least. It might be a safety precaution to some outside intruders trying to take over Aperture.”

“ _Black Mesa?”_

“Who else?”

“ _It has to be talking about you because none of us are anywhere near the chamber. You aren't going to--?”_

“Absolutely not!” Virgil snapped at Glitchy, pinching the fabric beneath the mic and bringing it unnecessarily close to his face as if he wasn't clear enough. “Not after what happened last time, are you kidding me? I'm just going to see if I can't do anything to make it change its mind. There has to be something to trigger a call off.” Most likely it was another password like the one he had used earlier. If this was simply protocol then the scientists must have had a precaution to shut the sequence off when either a core wasn't available or there was some kind of freak accident. For the time being, it was no different than a self-destruct timer. If he couldn't prove that they weren't there to steal equipment or information then the facility would let itself burn up from reactor neglect, killing whoever intruded in the first place. “How much time did they have?”

**Core Transfer Countdown. You Have 02:00:00 Hours To Complete Transfer.**

Virgil raised a brow at the ceiling. “Oh, that's actually not that bad. Mel, I'm going to put you down for a moment. I need to concentrate if I'm going to hack the mainframe...Heh. That sounds absolutely crazy saying it out loud. What am I even doing?”

The red-haired woman was hesitant, her exceptional instincts warning her of the danger that lurked in the chamber with them despite the original threat having been taken care of thoroughly. Virgil was helping her sit down, but she furrowed her brow at him with a hand tightening into a fist with the fabric of his jacket sleeve in her iron grasp. She felt as if she should shake her head, or write him a note, but she didn't fully understand her own feelings enough as to why she was so uneasy over the whole thing. Virgil had no choice but to pull back when she didn't let go of his jacket, getting a good look at the worry in her eyes but gently removed her hand. “Its fine! Really! The transfer can't happen as long as the computer doesn't have my consent. I'd literally have to agree with it and have you plug me in, and I don't think either of us are planning on doing that. I'm just shutting it off.”

Virgil knew what he was doing. Mel had to keep telling herself that. When it came to computers he knew better than her. He'd spoken of a rogue core that had been plugged in at the chassis and had gone mad. It was unclear whether the core had already been insane or if it had been corrupted, but either way the other cores spoke of the event with great disdain every time it had been mentioned. Whatever had happened in the facility in the time she was gone couldn't have been all too pleasant. Perhaps she would ask Virgil to elaborate on the event at a later time, but the android had walked a few steps away from her to face the center of the chamber. Though he had his back to Mel, he had gone completely stiff and she could only imagine that he had the same emotionless expression that occurred whenever he tried to breech anything electrical or was plugged in. The very one that sent chills up her spine and reminded Mel that he was not like her.

She would be right, and as Virgil concentrated on hacking the mainframe his face had dropped to an expression of stone, unwavering in how uncanny it was to look human but be completely vacant like a toy. His mind wandered into the black cloud that had made him sick earlier, but much more prepared for the sudden rush of dizziness this time and grounded himself for its effect. He could tough it out long enough to silence the hard shut off sequence. The sensation came to him, but Virgil had made himself too busy to care for it. He had to find the source of the signal first and foremost. He suspected that if it wasn't in the chamber itself then it would not be far. He searched for possible places a security protocol such as this would have been issued from, with the prime suspect being AEGIS' lair, but it was too far away for how strong the feed was. Finally, Virgil found the countdown coming from the same room Music Core was occupying and began picking it apart, trying out different passwords.

Was he lucky enough to have the password be the same that he and Mel had stumbled upon? Unfortunately not, but the search had not been so difficult either. He found it in the name 'Caroline', the woman who gave her life to create GLaDOS, and the countdown was shut off. That, in itself, was a relief but the mainframe was still teeming with activity. It seemed determined to either wake GLaDOS back up or replace Her. Either way, Virgil got the feeling that it was absolutely desperate to keep the facility running at full capacity. Ironic, considering it had issued a grand scale self destruct not moments ago. Virgil could have ended it there, having proven to the mainframe that he was not some outside intruder and that the action to put the central core on ice had been legitimate. It wasn't entirely true, but it didn't need to know that. There seemed to be no form of sentience within its numbers. Not like the cores, anyway. He could have ended it there. He could have walked away, but Virgil had a thought. A single word that appeared in his mind's eye in bright, green letters that peaked his interest.

_EXIT_

The android was confused to start with, but it became clear when he was suddenly shown different parts of Aperture where there were escape routes. Different windows, passages, fire doors, evacuation tunnels, and all leading to the surface. Some of them he had no idea existed. Feeling a swell of excitement, he leafed through the files being fed to him and found that not only were they exits, but ones that were still in working service. Mel had a multitude to pick from, but he came to the conclusion that while some seemed faster than the one they had agreed on, none of them had the car and supplies needed for long distance travel. So they were virtually useless to them now unless the Gremlin broke down or they needed and emergency escape. The frustrating part was that there was one right by the chamber that could have easily been accessible from before they got caught via Nigel the tattle-tale.

But the part that made him feel absolutely fantastic about the whole thing was that they had nothing stopping them from reaching the outside anymore. He could get Mel out of here once and for all. She'd be safe. Heck, even the facility itself was much safer now with both GLaDOS and AEGIS shut off. If she had the proper supplies she could have lived here. Sure, she had been delusional when the subject came up before, but that was different than now.

As if on command, more files came to him. Photos and the location of a warehouse. More like a large storage within the enrichment center with cans of food, water, mattresses, sheets, spare clothing, soap, and all kinds of human essentials. Where had that been? It was in a much higher corner of the facility than where he had normally traveled and close to where a large number of test subjects had been stored in motel like mobile rooms. There were cores meant to take care of the humans in that sector, but the test subjects had died away when the power got cut. A single human could have lived off of the supplies in this storage for the run of their natural life span. Feeling unusually giddy, Virgil turned back to Mel but kept his wifi aimed at the mainframe so that he didn't lose the files. Otherwise he would have to physically plug himself in to store and keep them, but once he cut the wifi they would vanish.

“I have some really good news! I got rid of the countdown! The mainframe still isn't asleep but its not going to blow us up anymore. So that's nice, and as long as She isn't awake it won't do anything else.”

Mel had begun to worry, Virgil having gone quiet for a good ten minutes since he started hacking into the mainframe. When he was finally himself again she smiled at him from the floor, her arms wrapped around the knees pressed to her chest. Virgil found himself with an audience of one, for the next thing he did was turn off the mic on his jacket so he could speak with Mel privately. The cores back at the manufacturing line would be deaf to them.

“I have some other good news. I wanted to run an idea by you, and I think it would certainly work out for both of us. Alright, so as we both know, She is off. Not technically off, but as off as She can be. Either way the facility is a great deal less dangerous with Her gone. There's still pits and toxic and things like that, but you seem to have adapted pretty well, right?”

Mel nodded at him, still weary from her fight and honestly hoping he would wrap this up  so she could go and lie down somewhere for a good nap. She was not sure if it was malnutrition catching up to her again or poison from the gas, but she wasn't feeling well. She kept on smiling, though, and listened to him patiently.

“Anyway, what I am saying is...I found a warehouse here in the more overgrown part of the facility. Its brimming with supplies! It has everything from food and clothes to lamps and beds. There's even movie tapes and some old televisions. I found a bunch of files while I was poking around the mainframe for a password that led me right to it. You could easily live here!”

While the argument had been viable earlier, and clearly something she had considered, to hear it now out of Virgil was the last thing Mel had expected. He had been strongly against the idea before, and for good reason. Virgil snapped her back to reality and in the end she felt like a fool for thinking it. Her aim was to leave. She could not stay here without the sun and without human interaction. Civilization, if it was still out there somewhere. Supplies aside, Virgil was the biggest reason why she would stay, but unfortunately she realized he wasn't enough. To live here wasn't to live at all for a human, and she shook her head to decline the suggestion.

Virgil felt a painful spark in his head, his joyful features dropping.

Mel didn't want to stay? She'd been so keen on it earlier. What had changed? He told her it was a bad idea and she listened to him. He was saying now that it was a good idea so why wasn't she listening to him? She always listened to him. He would try again.

Virgil's brows creased, giving the lady a concerned grin. “Mel... We might not find anything up there. I can't guarantee that what you are looking for is still around. I don't know, maybe it is, but you could live just as comfortably here. You said it yourself. We don't have to be alone anymore. You've got friends down here, and not just me either by the looks of it.” He extended an arm for Mel, offering to help her up. “C'mon, Miss Olympic. What do you say?”

The woman was quick to accept his offer to help her off the floor once again, but to say no to him now was hard. He had come around and they had switched their views with her objective to leave this place behind her and Virgil putting their friendship before her well being. But she had to leave and she smiled at him sympathetically with another simple head shake. She mouthed to him 'I'm sorry' and left it at that.

Mel released her grip from the hand he had offered her, but it would not fall away to her side. Her eyes darted downward as she winced, his grip tightening around her hand and the woman instinctively attempted to pull it away. The sharp pain from the iron hold shot up her arm, Mel failing to release herself. She stopped up when she finally lifted her eyes at Virgil, startled and confused and ready to tell him off for hurting her. This was under the assumption he didn't mean it and needed to be reminded of his strength again. Seeing the dramatic change in his face, now,  that may not have been true. The android stared her down, glaring in a way she had not seen. At least, she hadn't seen it from him. The yellow of his glowing eyes quickly started to remind her of another as the third eye built into his chest turned from a warm amber to a deep, hot red.

“Just so you know, Mel, that wasn't _exactly_ the answer I was looking for.”


	16. Chapter 16

Mel flinched away, fear now prominent in her blue eyes and she tugged harder to get away from Virgil and his iron grip. She was only freed when the android decided to release her wrist on his own, letting her fall to the floor. The test subject had taken so much worse than a simple trip to the paneled ground, especially in the past few hours, but somehow she found this time it was much harder for her to get up. Stricken with shock, confusion, and anxiety she could only turn herself over on her back and eye her assailant.

“I was looking for something more along the lines of, um, 'yes that sounds like an amazing idea, Virgil! Great job on the find!'”

And he was something else entirely. Never had she seen such wrath from him, even with the assumption he had that emotion before now. He had been frustrated. Angry, in the pettiest of ways. More than annoyed or flustered, but this was malice beyond what she had thought was in his nature. The only thing that kept Mel believing that this was, in fact, _her_ Virgil was behind the rage and embers there was hurt. Because of her?

“You have had no problems listening to me up until now, even when I was lying to you about the whole Cave Johnson thing.” He had made himself hysterical, a laugh of disbelief breaking his rant in two before he continued. “I mean, who does that? Follow around the instructions of a perfect stranger that is clearly not who they say they are? You, that's who! And now that I've found a way for you to live comfortably you all of a sudden decide that I'm not worth listening to? Oh, no I get it. That's just great. I mean it, its really great! Its not like I've lead you out of the facility or have saved your life, right? I couldn't possibly know what I'm talking about!”

Mel reached for one of her notes, her hand shaking as she started the first few letters of a message that would have said 'You're scaring me.' if Virgil hadn't grabbed it from her and tossed it to the side in a wadded ball. He'd taken her voice. Even with the clear hurt in his own, this was not Virgil.

“Enough with the notes! There's no arguing this, Mel! Its for your own good, so this is happening whether you like it or not! I don't care if I have to lock you behind the most difficult to open door in the facility, you are staying he—AAARGH!!!”

She was having none of it.

Mel swiped her leg out from under Virgil, catching him on the ankle and tugging hard to get his heavy weight to fall back under her kick. She didn't watch to see him trip, and she didn't stay to hear what he'd have to say afterward. The woman got another shot of adrenaline pumping her heart into gear and she got up to run. Virgil groaned, putting a hand to his head and practically snarling in Mel's direction as he called after her, his eyes a hot flare. _“MEL!”_

There was the panel Virgil had walked through earlier to get to her, seeing a long hallway on the other side and Mel aimed for it, her medal-winning legs carrying her clean out of the entrance. She had nearly made it clear past the corridor and towards the security exit when something cold and hard clamped against her ankle and yanked her down. The woman struggled, but the claw dragged her straight back, sliding Mel sideways against the smooth floor until she was in the chamber. With a defiant snap, the claw's wires hoisted her into the air so that she was hanging upside down by her boot and facing the now recently composed android. “Okay, you know what? This isn't getting us anywhere. That was _RUDE_ , Mel!”

 

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Back at the core line, the personality spheres had been tossed into a frenzied tizzy of confusion over the events that they could no longer hear, but see quite well from the security cameras. Ego core had forced himself to the front of the huddle so he could police the monitor screen, Rick and Glitchy just barely able to get in beside him. “What the devil is happening?!”

Rick was kind enough to interject with some unwarranted enthusiasm. “This is looking awful familiar, so if I had to take a guess, Lil' Maintenance down there somehow got himself plugged in after all.”

“He's not plugged into anything, you oaf! When did this transfer happen? When, I ask you?! We've been watching them this whole bloody time!”

Glitchy had been quiet until now, but felt bold enough to cut Jonathan off of another angry tirade at the Adventure Core. “Perhaps it was his connection acting upon a manifestation of his wants and the mainframe turning that into consent for a wireless transfer of sorts, thus leading to Virgil acting as the current inhibitor of the core's functions and becoming corrupted in the process just as I.D had?”

A line of rainbow, independent eyes blinked wordlessly at Glitchy, each taking its own time to let the possibility sink in before the Adventure Core broke the ice for those too thrown to speak. “In other words we're screwed.”

 

\---------

 

Virgil walked forward, meeting the struggling human at eye level, though she was still hanging from the claw with her hair coming undone and creating a fall of red curls reaching for the floor bellow her. He had a hand to the back of his neck where he'd taken the fall and shot a glare at Mel. “Did you just _attack_ me?! What warranted that? I haven't done anything to you!”

Mel managed to struggle with her fear hard enough to push it away from the surface and awed at him in disbelief, waving an arm so that she gestured to the claw around her foot.

“I did that _after_ you attacked me! What is your deal?”

The human didn't need her notepad or pen. Virgil merely needed to know three very simple words that she would mouth to him. This was her bottom line. What she really and truly wanted from him, and if he could not follow basic instructions than they had nothing else to talk about.

Let. Me. Go.

To Virgil, she was being both irrational and inconsiderate...selfish, even. How was it she was allowed to ask him to come with her up to the surface but he couldn't ask Mel to stay down here with him? Vengeful spite was the only justice that felt right to him for being wronged and stepped on like this, and by _her!_ The one person he dared to consider a friend. All of his walls fell and she had taken advantage of it! What could he possibly do to get back at her? He had ideas, but only one spoke repetitively in his ear and picked at what he considered a brain. It felt right.

“Fine. You can go.”

Virgil dropped her, Mel half-expecting he would and just managed to turn so that she landed on her right shoulder instead of her head. It had been a painful drop that sent her curling into herself, but at least she didn't hit anything exceptionally important.

“Get out on your own.” Virgil continued as Mel slowly picked herself up from the floor with obviously painful effort. Everything in his head screamed two words like a skipped disc, repeating two of the things he desired most. The two things he wanted now, more than anything. Vengeance was one of them. Science had unexpectedly been another. “You're free as a bird if you can manage to get through some testing chambers! Yeah? How's that for a deal—wait.”

Vigil stopped.

Mel had initially been panicking at the thought of doing more testing, and at his hands, but the abrupt halt left her befuddled...And he looked just as confused as she did.

No...no wait.

Wait.

“Wait.” Virgil said out loud this time after he rolled the word around in his head for a moment. “Wait wait wait wait wait wait...hold up.” He turned his attention away from Mel, staring at the floor in concentration instead and holding his chin thoughtfully. Virgil's brow sat heavy over his eyes, the lower it dropped the more bemused he appeared. Finally he waved a hand in the air and looked back up at Mel with the gaining of a fast coming epiphany, and it was obviously scaring him into raising his voice an octave or two.

“I DON'T CARE ABOUT TESTING!”

Virgil's hands flew to his head and he gripped at it, panic rising and he backed away from Mel, tripping over his own uncoordinated legs as he did. The room spun and colors merged together. What was this sensation? He had felt it recently...he was dizzy! This was what dizzy was, and he hated it! But the thing he hated most was the sudden realization that he had been speaking words that were not his own. What was happening?!

“I don't care about testing or science or keeping you here, so what is this?!” He got to his knees, still frantically gripping his head and looking up fearfully at the woman. “Mel, there's something wrong! I don't want any of this! What am I doing?! I'm...Oh _god_ , I'm corrupted!”

Saying it out loud helped, somewhat. It cleared any confusion he had, but at the same time he felt worse for it. How could this have happened? He had been so careful! He hadn't been physically plugged in and he hadn't given the mainframe his consent...unless, expressing that he wanted maps of the facility through said mainframe to help Mel had been permission. Could it do that? He'd used it for personal means, maybe that was all it really needed.

Virgil's vision slowly faded, his mind's eye showing him the possibilities of the mistakes he had made and the things he had said that were never his own. Something black and festering giggled and bubbled like boiling tar, sticking a web of rage and insanity through Virgil's own coding. He could feel it eating at his consciousness, and it felt...it felt _sooooo_ right! Nothing else had ever made him feel so important, like this is what he had been made to do all this time. This was what he'd been programmed to do from the very start. A voice at the back of his head told him science was everything. Testing was everything. Anger was everything and nothing else mattered. The Mainframe was alive. It had never been GLaDOS, or the Intelligence Dampening Sphere. It had a mind of its own. One that told Virgil what he wanted to hear and fed him the power of a God to do whatever he wanted. One other thing was becoming alarmingly clear to Virgil the further he dug.

The Mainframe, like him and just about every sentient robot in this facility, had been a person.

“He's in my head!” The robot snapped. The lights in the room flared and dimmed radically and the walls and floor panels moved in random patterns.

Mel collected herself, having to quickly jump away as the floor bellow her moved and shifted. She found that the center of the chamber where GLaDOS lay dormant was the only space that remained untouched by the chaos and she found the courage to even climb onto the robot's chassis to avoid it all. Mel had a higher view of the chamber and a balcony seat of Virgil practically losing his mind.

“Get him out! Get him out! Get him out!”

Mel shook her head.

 _'Him?'_ Who's 'him?' What was he talking about? She decided it didn't matter. Virgil was clearly losing himself and she needed to do something about it. The entire facility answered to every emotion that the android felt and in his panic it was all coming undone. Mel could hear the distant sounds of machinery breaking, metal groaning as it bent, and alarms being set off. The lights in the room blinked from blindingly bright to absolute darkness. He had mentioned reactors. She didn't fully comprehend what kind of reactors, just that they went _boom_ under certain circumstances. If Virgil had no control and was being this frantic he could accidentally set one off.

While he was struggling, Mel looked around for...anything. She didn't know what she was going to do, to be completely honest. She wasn't like the cores who seemed to make straight up miracles happen just by either jacking themselves into a computer or using nothing but a keyboard. The only thing she was good for was physical sabotage, and she wasn't entirely sure that could work here. From the wave of floor panels rising and falling, she could see the stalemate button across the chamber from her. No, that only worked if a a transfer was being made, right? She couldn't just push it and make everything better.

Virgil could hear voices. Three, to be exact. He recognized them, but some were more familiar than others. They never stopped. It was impossible for him to block them out, and they chattered relentlessly in his ears. Why had these files been saved? Had they been apart of the Mainframe and he was just now being exposed to them?

“ _Well done. Here come the test results. 'You are a horrible person.'”_

“ _I'm still holding all the cards!”_

“ _That thing you burned isn't important to me.”_

“ _I can't get over how small you are! But I'm huge!”_

_"Luckily, I'm a bigger person than that..."_

“ _I am not a moron!”_

Those two...he could almost deal with them. They were more like background static. At least, when compared to the third voice. Aggressive, loud, unstable, feverish, enraged...it was everything the Mainframe was. Everything the Mainframe felt like the moment Virgil had gotten a hold of himself.

_"Ground up moon rocks are pure poison. I am deathly ill. Still, it turns out they’re a great portal conductor."_

_"Science isn't about WHY. It's about WHY NOT. Why is so much of our science dangerous? Why don't you marry safe science if you love it so much?!"_

“ _I'm going to burn your house down! With the lemons!”_

“ _If I die before you people can pour me into a computer, I want Caroline to run this place. Now, she’ll argue. She’ll say she can’t. She’s modest like that. But you make her!”_

Virgil groaned desperately. This was absolutely unbearable. Mel watched from her safe zone as her friend struggled. Gathering up what little wit and stamina she had left, she watched the floors for any kind of a pattern. If she missed and fell through the tiles there was no telling what kind of a drop waited for her bellow the chamber, but they were being unpredictable. Finally, she decided her best bet was to make a straight run for it and improvise as she went. Thankfully, they had not been as difficult as she had worked herself up into believing and Mel managed to sprint to Virgil by practically playing hopscotch.

Virgil hadn't seen her. He had been too distracted with the overwhelming dread that came with the Mainframe. The absolute weight of the entire facility pressing him flat. He could see for miles and feel every centimeter of it all. What was working as intended left him satisfied and what was broken and dysfunctional made him hurt. The scariest part was when he realized that loud, sinister voice he had been hearing was no longer just repeating sound files.

“ _You know what would be real science? Putting a hole in this floor and watching that Olympian drop like a rock. See if she bounces off of something on her way down. They're more durable, right? The girl should be fine.”_

“What the--” Virgil's head snapped up when it hit him that the voice had suddenly gotten very, _very_ specific. Sure enough, Mel was dodging her way around the flailing floor panels to reach him, and that made him panic even more. Putting aside the fact that he had just found confirmation that the Mainframe was practically possessed, he reached out for his friend just as the floors moved under Mel to create a giant gap with a sinking drop beneath her. “MEL!”

He was too late to successfully grab a hold of Mel's outstretched hand. The woman, as skilfully as she had skipped the length of the chamber over to Virgil, there was nothing she could have done about the vortex that opened up from under her feet and sent her plummeting. Virgil got just a quick glimpse of her terrified, blue eyes before she dropped like a stone, the tips of his fingers just brushing her open palm. Having his special case of wifi, Virgil was accustomed to moving things at his will, but usually minor things. A claw may not have been one of them initially and though he had used them to hurt Mel earlier, he was now grateful for the opportunity to use one now and snatched the human midair just by the sleeve of her jumpsuit. Gritting her teeth from the whiplash, but grateful all the same, she reached up to latch onto the cord of the metal claw for further support while she hung there.

Virgil relaxed, melting flat against the now still floor a moment to cool off. He called down to Mel once he'd composed himself. “Christ...Are you okay down there, Mel?!”

Mel could only nod. Nodding meant she was alive. Being alive encouraged a nod. It all came full circle.

“O-okay...okay, swell! I'll start pulling you up!”

“ _Well, that was a big-fat-failure. What a letdown.”_

“GAH!” Virgil jumped back from the edge, having almost forgotten about the man in his head and had been surprised by him a second time. “W-what?”

“ _Try something else. Ginger likes the testing tracks, right? Can we get her one with lasers?”_

“NO!” Virgil was completely convinced, now, that the Mainframe was very much aware and was bullying him around. Or more accurately, was bullying him into making Mel suffer. What a creep! Could he talk to it?

“Stop talking to me!”

Correction: Could he talk to it about not talking?

“ _Found one! Try this out! Its got lots of lasers! You'll thank me when she's done.”_

Oh jeez, it wasn't going to be one of those things, was it? He'd test it out.“Hey, voice guy? What color is an orange?”

“ _I think there's repulsion gel too, but I honestly didn't check. Well, whatever is in there its blue and all over the place.”_

Virgil was able to assess the situation pretty quickly. He had seen AIs like this before. Not usually in cores, but in simpler machines like the turrets, who were incapable of having a two way conversation merely because everything you were to ask them would fly over their head. They were physically unable to respond to you, but could comment through their own line of thinking or on your actions, rather than thoughts. To put it plainly, it was like having someone ignore everything you say so that they can talk about themselves. And it was absolutely unholy how obnoxious it could be. This meant there would be no reasoning with the Mainframe.

While Virgil seemed to be having a conversation with himself and not helping hoist her up like he said he would, Mel had taken the initiative to start climbing the wire of the claw that had saved her. She'd worry about Virgil's recent bout of insanity once she wasn't dangling above a pit into the center of the earth. Hearing something shift far from bellow her, Mel looked down to see a great structure rising from the mist. She could feel the vibrations of metal friction through the wires of the claw into her arm, turning them jello and causing her to almost let go. Her hands fumbled up the wire clumsily to earn her grip back, watching over her shoulder fearfully at the giant mass rising towards them. She recognized it as one of the many boxed away test chambers Aperture carried in bulk along the tracks, the top splitting like Pandora's box to reveal a room with one cube, one exit, one hard light bridge, and about fifty-something lasers.

Virgil stepped forward to peek out over the rising, obviously deadly puzzle and was losing it over just how many lasers could fit into one room. “This is madness! This whole thing is madness! I did _NOT_ call that up here!”

Unbelievable. Mel paused, gawking at the chamber to look up and see Virgil talking to himself again. Whatever that 'he' had been in his head earlier, undoubtedly. One of the other cores? She couldn't ask him with her sticky notes having most likely dropped into oblivion. Even less that she was clinging to a wire extension. It was only after she had turned her attention to Virgil that she only just witnessed a second claw swing out from the great blue nether to snap at the wire she'd been using as a life line. She was falling again. Getting really, really tired with falling. Whether by luck, or lack there of, she managed to land not too far down in the opening of the testing chamber on the center of the hard light bridge, hovering over a Red Sea of Aperture lasers that burned at about the same temperature as the sun's surface.

“ _Heya, pal? Great work on getting that testing track up here, but what about a Portal Gun? Freckles down there ain't got one!”_

If Virgil's face could have turned red, it would have. He would need blood flow to run into his head in order to physically accomplish it, but instead he had his yellow cooling agent. Virgil's cheeks grew a dim, yellow tint of frustration. “I didn't DO that, you obnoxious, psychopathic parasite!”

Parasite?

“OH!...Oh oh oh oh!” The lights around Virgil flared with his excitement. He managed to smile! Sure, the facility was malfunctioning...again Sure, his best friend was hanging above a pit of lasers. Sure, he was corrupted by a possessed Mainframe. Everything taken into consideration, he felt he'd just made the discovery of the century. “Mel! I'm handing you over a portal device!” Virgil called over the edge of the crumbling central chamber, a claw finding Mel's newer portal gun and dropping the weapon down to her.

The woman caught it, but she had to question if Virgil had fully broken himself away from the corrupted state he had been in not twenty minutes ago. She was hoping he had given the gun to her for protection and not to solve the laser test.

“You got it?”

She gave him an uncertain thumbs up.

“Okay, great! Just in case you were confused, there's a man talking in my head to me.”

Mel shrugged up at the android and tilted her head from side to side. She'd guessed that. Give her some fresh news.

“Its the Mainframe! We've been tackling this head on but what we need to do is treat it as a virus rather than something tangible!” With further perception, Virgil could see the hesitance in Mel's features. She was worn to the bone, beat, most likely dehydrated and hungry again, and injured. All because of GLaDOS and...well, himself. Even if Mel was in good enough shape to help him, how would he earn her trust back? Could he? She must have known that this wasn't him...Please, she must have.

“I know...I know I've hurt you and that you're at your physical limit. You don't have any reason to listen to me, I understand that. But I can prove I can make it better, if you can help me this one last time.”

Mel had been shaken to her core and didn't know what to think. Virgil was fine now, but he had switched on a dime. She wanted so genuinely to trust him, and even if she could forgive the robot there was a piece of her that would always be reminded that he was not human. He was a machine, and machines could be manipulated to be anything. Whatever that thing had been behind his glowing gold eyes was dark, and apparently still with him as long as he was plugged in.

That was just it, though. He was her friend and he needed her. Even if Virgil turned again, she had to help him back to his old self. There wasn't a force in Aperture that could keep her from getting him out of there. Mel carefully stood up from the hard light bridge, craning her neck to the robot far above her and nodding.

Virgil shook his own head in disbelief as a response. God, this woman was a saint. They could do this. They had to do this. “You need to make it to the control center for the main chamber! That's where I had been talking with you earlier. There should be a core still there if he hasn't run off. I'll help as you go and give you instructions once you are there! I, uh...I'd do it myself...really, I would. I’d be doing it right now, in fact, but it seems that I'm banned from vaccinating myself. I'm going to stay here, but you won't be on your own.”

_“Has she started testing yet? Offer the girl some cash, that usually helps. We got any Lincolns lying around here? The pennies, not the bills.”_

Virgil grit his teeth and winced at the voice in his head again. He felt something move bellow him, catching a claw that had been coming to knock Mel into the chamber of lasers and stopping it before it could touch her. Whether he had truly been the one to call it or not, Virgil did not have a clear answer. All he knew was that he had been battling with the sticky, weighted fog that was the Mainframe to stop everything from spinning out of control. He may have even been making things worse by technically arguing with a piece of himself to cease doing what it was meant for, but if he gave in now there was no helping Mel. She would be killed. Once Virgil realized he still had some control by stopping that claw, he attempted to turn the lasers off.

Bingo! That worked, they were off. What else could he call? He found another hard light bridge generator nearby, moving it opposite to the one Mel had been standing on so that it reached a catwalk. Mel watched, amazed, as the environment around her changed. Her blue eyes followed the second bridge running directly across her's the the catwalk and got the hint, already heading in its direction.

“W-wait!”

Virgil's voice was evermore distant, but despite the collapse of Aperture at her heels, she turned to look up at Virgil one more time patiently. The android got to his knees, his fingers gripping the end of the floor that had opened wide to trap Mel. He was so sorry, and she could see it in him, along with the struggle and burden of Aperture's entire mass on his back. Had GLaDOS been the same? She never had the face to express the weight she carried that was so clear on Virgil specifically because he had the right features. If this is what it was like, how much of a Monster had She been even after she was no longer human.

“I believe in you, Mel. I'm going to be behind you every step of the way.”

Mel smiled, feeling the nervous pit in her gut melt away and gave Virgil one last nod. She knew he would be.

Virgil watched her got until she was out of sigh, passing the catwalk and on her way to the control room. He sighed, pulling himself away from the side of the pit only to rest his forehead on the hard, cold tiles. The reactors were acting up, he could feel it. Fantastic. He’d done all that bragging that he could be better at this than GLaDOS and couldn’t even back it up.

_“Hey, did you know the nuclear reactors are overheating? You know how to take care of that right?”_

The android groaned. “Run, Mel...”


	17. Chapter 17

Virgil paced. Words could not be spoken and thoughts could not be conceived. He felt everything and nothing at all. The entire facility spun in his head like a hurricane of images from every camera installed into his walls. Thousands of images were fed to him, the android placing his hands to his head and closing his eyes just to concentrate as he repeated his walking cycle. Red hair and blue eyes. Tan jumpsuit and brown boots. A warm smile and sharp movements. These are what he had to search for, and when he found her he held onto her for as long as he could, until she was once again out of his sight. Virgil would have to switch to another camera and follow her through it until she was out of its range.

“Mel, that's a dead end! Turn left!”

She listened to him without hesitation. He'd been so wrong to snap at her, and he had to wonder how much of it had really been his fault and how much of it was the Mainframe. He did truly and passionately want to see Mel happy and healthy and felt as if her staying here had been the better option than wandering around up on the surface with...nothing. What was the thing that drove her and told her that if she left everything would be okay? He had to ask her when he got the chance. She was so confident, despite having lived on the surface for the past few months with that nothingness. Then there was the part of him that had to face the logic that maybe there was nothing either of them could do and she was just damned to fail. To not go on. Virgil watched her run, even though most of her was not functioning properly.

“She's got this...” Virgil mumbled to himself, then caught sight of a pit down the catwalk she'd chosen. “You're coming to a drop!” That wasn't there before. Must have happened after he'd come back from the control room. “There's a white wall on the other side! Try looking for another one near you!”

Mel did just that, shooting the wall across the pit and back-tracking into a nearly empty office where there was conversion gel wall to wall. She was easily able to avoid the pit and continued on her way. She was coming close to the control room, now, since it was not terribly far from the main chamber. It was just a bit of a run around for someone who had legs. Virgil instructed her to follow a closed off, dark corridor that ran between offices all the way down to the end door. Mel opened up into a room with a cluster of robots still inside. She jumped at the sight of the turrets, but was quickly able to assess that they were friendly when they did not shoot at her immediately. The Music Core turned around in surprise, as did Atlas and P-Body, towards the woman leaning against the door frame.

“Oh-woah, woah, woah...where did you come from?” Music's orange eye flared up, but Mel had no choice but to ignore him. She stumbled her way to the dash with a large monitor that nearly covered the whole wall. She could see through the cameras Virgil pacing in the chamber and she sighed with relief. She'd made it.

“Did you make it?”

Mel breathed a small laugh to herself, put her fingers to the keyboard in front of her, and typed in _'yes'._

“Oh, excellent!” Virgil turned around to where he knew the camera feed would be coming from for the control room, his voice coming in through the desktop speakers. “Is Music Core  still there?”

Yes.

“Alright, have him help you look for the instructions on how to vaccinate me. I can't tell you how. Like, I physically couldn't do it even if I tried.”

She believed him. There were a lot of very odd protocols that the Aperture robots were forbidden to do, whether they were rebellious enough to give a damn or not. Mel looked up at Music Core, not at all sure if she had seen him among the rest of the cores or not from how similar they all looked in a huddle, and pointed at the computer.

Music shook his eye at her. “I can't help you past browsing, just giving you a heads up. I'm not programmed for virus vaccination. I'm made to sing sweet, sweet ballads.”

Mel raised a brow at the core. She would have been more perplexed, but he still was not the strangest of the cores she had seen. Following the Music Core's instructions on where to go in the computer, the human set to work on curing her friend.

 

\----------

 

Virgil had stopped pacing and sank to his knees. He could shut his vision off of the rest of Aperture and give himself a moment of rest from all the white noise and overwhelming camera footage. There was still one thing buzzing at the back of his mind, however, and it was the part of him that he hoped would be cured soon.

“ _Why isn't science being done? You aren't doing your work if you are just sitting here feeling sorry for yourself on your artificial behind. Get up and do your job!”_

“This isn't my job...” Virgil groaned, his voice quiet and fed up.

“ _What is your job?”_

“I....I fix things...” He was only mildly aware that the voice in his head had finally answered him directly, but at this point he didn't care. Everything was almost over. He'd be rid of it all and things could go back to normal. Or as normal as it could get around here.

“ _That's not your job! You build things! For science! But then you go and break them for your own selfishness!”_

Virgil paused. It had made out that distinction, and the android found himself still possessed with denial. “That's not what I do. Robots come into my repair wing broken and I help fix them. Its that simple, disembodied angry voice in my head.”

“ _You worked for me, slacker!”_ The voice was growing all the more angrier the longer Virgil had decided to respond to him, the Mainframe getting surprisingly defensive and touchy of a subject that would not have otherwise concerned it. _“But you decided you were too good for this place and turned your back on us! You caused us a lot of damage, a lot of money, and a lot of trouble, lug nut! Doesn't matter if I was around to see it or not, you owe me! You owe Aperture!”_

“That's not me...” He grit his teeth, but he didn't have the energy to snap at this thing anymore than he already had. If he got any more emotional he could see himself blowing a fuse. That could be taken literally or figuratively.

“ _It_ _ **was**_ _you.”_ The voice continued to reply to Virgil directly now, and with each thing it spoke the Maintenance Core could feel a small part of himself slipping away from his own thoughts. The voice in his head barked again. _“And you know what? I don't think you're qualified to run this place.”_

Something was happening. Something very...very... _monumentally_ worrying. Little by little Virgil's vision faded out. It wasn't instant, or even very quick. It was like a black mist slowly rolling in, and as it did the voice in his head became less clear, as did his own thoughts. The last thing in his mind was the human that was at the control room and how he had to get through to her what was happening. There was no fighting it, and he'd already tried. The simple fact was that it was just going to happen. While he still had a grip on the facility he patched himself through to the control room to speak to the woman putting her life on the line to save their hides, synthetic or otherwise.

 

\----------

 

“Um...Mel? There's been a complication.”

Mel looked up. Had Virgil said the exact opposite of what she was now hearing she still knew him well enough by the infliction in his voice that something had gone horribly wrong. She held a hand up to Music, who had been in the middle of helping her set up the vaccine, and the core went quiet so they could hear Virgil speak. When he didn't say anything after a drawn out pause she turned back to the monitor that held a camera on him. Externally, he looked to be fine, but since he had not continued she typed something into the computer to egg it out of him.

What is it?

“I couldn't tell you, honestly. I don't really know, myself. But I feel like I'm not going to have your back like I said I would. You might be on your own for this one.”

Virgil, you need to try and tell me what is wrong.

“I can't... I'm too tired...”

That made no sense. At all. Also, he wasn't allowed to be tired. He was a machine for, heaven's sake. She was the only one allowed to be tired right now. Mel was furiously typing, trying to get him to be less vague, but going on his voice alone it would have sounded like a human about ready to go to sleep for the night. His pronunciation was slurred, slow, and dull. Basically, everything that Virgil was not. Still, she tried to get through to him.

Hang in there just a little longer. We're almost done.

“I believe ya, Mel. I'm not worried.” It sounded like it was getting worse. “Just hurry it up, yeah?”

That was the last she'd heard from him, and Mel looked back at the camera monitor beyond confused. What in the actual hell? He sounded like he had powered down, but Virgil still stood in the center of the main chamber like nothing had happened. She tried typing to him to ask if he could still read her, but with no response.

“Zoom in.” Music suggested, and Mel gave him a questioning look.

“That means you use the camera to look at him closer—hold on, I'll do it.” Music Core moved in and stuck out a prong from his hull that hooked into the console. The monitor Mel had been observing closed in on the above view of Virgil so that they could see his face more clearly. The image was no longer as clear, but it didn't need to be for Mel to see what had happened. Just like the times he had been in the assist droid storage room and helping her in the central chamber, Virgil's face was a complete blank. The lights were on but no one was home, as her mother used to say to her. At no point in her life did this apply to anyone quite as much as Mel could see from Virgil. He was just standing there.

The woman turned away from the camera and motioned at Music to continue helping her, and quickly. He took the hint and hastily got on track. “Okay! Okay! I get it! Remind me to play you some smooth jazz when this is done so you can calm down a notch, huh lady? Look, we're almost done. See that code at the right corner of that black screen. Its highlighted in neon green. Copy-paste that to your file like I showed you. Any other green text like that you are going to do the same and then you are done. We can shoot it on down and see if it works!”

She nodded, doing as Music said until the black window had nothing else for her to work with. The instructions that she'd pulled up directed her to a converter to put everything she had worked on through until she had what she hoped was the virus vaccine Virgil had spoken of. She found it interesting that the terminology used for machines was similar to that of humans and that they, too, could catch viruses that could be healed. To Mel, this vaccine looked like a mess of letters and numbers that, for the most part, did not form anything readable. If it made a difference for Virgil then it didn't matter.

The computer beeped at her and from a small slot down the desktop a thin, rectangular object appeared from inside the computer console. Mel didn't know whether to touch it or not, so she looked to Music for advice. She was disappointed to find he looked a little put off. She'd gotten very good at reading the core's emotions just through their single eye, and his was squinting at the object protruding from the console in disgust. “Oooooooh, well that's just great. Its asking you to do  the vaccine manually.”

She only had a small idea of what that meant. Mel took the object from the console and inspected it.

Wait...she recognized this. Yes, the end point of this device. The hollow, metal bit that came out at the end with a square opening...it was exactly what she had used to plug into Virgil, but without the cord attached to it. He had a slot for this in his wrist! Mel opened the breast pocket of her jumpsuit and placed the USB drive safely inside. She would run like a bullet shot from a gun to get this down there to him.

That is when the lights turned off.

Mel froze, dropping everything that she was about to do and keeping perfectly still. Even the computers had shut off and the only light in the room to be had was from the colorful eyes of the Music Core, Atlas, P-body, and the empty turrets. They all looked just as confused as she did and the two testing bots trilled at each other in concern. The facility was silent. Before, Mel could hear the distant factory sounds of machines, but the white noise had died off. A moment ago the red glow in the room had been solely exclusive to the pacifist turrets, who had not made so much as a peep since Mel walked through the door. Red was no longer their color alone and Mel would find this true as she turned to Music to ask him a question, only to discover that the eye color of his optic had changed from bright orange to a deep crimson. Remembering what had happened to Virgil in the central chamber, this initially frightened Mel and she took the precaution to stand away from the Music Core. However, after time had passed he hadn't so much as blinked, the optic staring straight ahead at...really, nothing. Mel raised her arm and waved a hand over his line of sight, but there had been no physical or verbal response to it. He simply hung there like a string-cut puppet, much like Virgil was now.

Mel looked up at Atlas and P-body. Neither of them seemed to have the same problem Music had, and both equally as concerned as she was. But there wasn't time to worry about it or the lights. The woman weaved her way past the turrets, taking extra care not to knock them over as she passed, and was back in the hallway. At first, the pitch black had been daunting without any light source and she wondered to herself how on earth was she going to find her way back to the chamber. The trot of mechanical footsteps followed her and two lights appeared to brighten up her path. Mel turned around to find Atlas and P-body had followed her out and had turned on their flashlight functions through their optics so that she could see. Each of them chirped at her, P-body giving Mel a thumbs up. She smiled and nodded at them to show she appreciated it and kept walking.

She assumed that the testing droids knew exactly where they were going and eventually fell to the back of the line to let them lead. After only a few minutes of walking the first sound other than their own footsteps caused all three of them to jump as it blared off. In the distance was an alarm of some kind. The noise itself was certainly faint, and nowhere near where they were traveling, but to exist in an otherwise silent environment had been startling. They stopped and waited to guess where it may have come from, but following it soon after was a much closer alarm of similar purpose. Mel compared the alarms to the ones she used to hear wailing throughout the her hometown as tornado warnings. One had destroyed their crops when she was nine-years-old, her family huddled in a stuffy, mildewed basement as it passed right over their heads. The dark and the dread, partnered with the alarms, had given her some very unwelcome nostalgia and it hit too close to home for her comfort.

Despite the alarms that were going off, nothing else had happened and they needed to keep going. They passed a personality core on their way to the central chamber, and Mel had no way of identifying it to see if she had seen it with the others before. It was stuck in the same state the Music Core had been; staring off into space like an empty shell with its optic barely glowing at all in that deep shade of red. Sure, there had been red-eyed cores she'd seen with the others, but this was beyond a coincidence anymore. It would have morally bothered Mel if she kept going without taking a closer look at the sorry piece of metal hanging from its management rail. Pulling a box under the core, she climbed up onto it to get a better look and she frowned at what she saw. The optic was simple in shape and had no fancy iris like Virgil, Jonathan, or Rick, who were all three very decorated. However, the core itself was bent out of shape, cracked, scratched, and bandaged up. Glitchy had been on his way to check on them when the lights went off. She could only assume it happened at the exact same time the Music Core had gone catatonic.

There was really nothing Mel could do. Jumping down from the box, she motioned to the testing droids to continue on their hike back to the central chamber and leave Glitchy where he hung.

The alarms continued to wail through the dark facility and echoed off the towering walls of the testing chambers, and more joined in. Not after long the lights of the facility turned back on, but not as they had been before. Like the cores, they were dimmed to red or a dark, ruddy orange. It was how the sun looked from behind black clouds of smoke during a fire, or even the low glow of embers dying out over that very same blaze. It was eerier than anything Mel had encountered while she had been in Aperture, which spoke miles of the facility's current state. P-body shivered and Atlas placed a hand on her side, trying to comfort the taller robot as they walked.

All three of them jumped about a foot in the air when a very loud voice addressed them over the never-ending amount of speakers Aperture possessed.

“ _Welcome to Aperture Science Innovators —oh, no sorry. That is incorrect. I haven't updated all my files yet. In any case, its good to have you on board! The enrichment center is the future of this world and the future of science! We are grateful that you have volunteered to help us in anyway you can!”_

Mel had to stop and process exactly what she was hearing. The voice was more than familiar, but it was not Virgil's. In fact, it belonged to no robot she had met in the past six months. This was the voice of the man she had signed up with when she volunteered to test. Though she had never met Cave Johnson in person, his prerecorded messages had followed her through most of the bottom part of the Aperture before it had been run down and decayed. In fact, she had even found a few after the fact when she'd woken up and was following Virgil's lead to the junkyards. The first thing in her mind was that the facility was playing one of his many prerecorded messages, but the next time he spoke she was proven very wrong.

“ _Now, I know what you're thinking. What can I do to help Science? Well, Miss Flanagan; for starters you can toss away that little thumb drive you've got in your front pocket.”_

Mel gasped, teetering a step back in shock, but catching herself and her hand flying protectively to the pocket where she kept the vaccine.

“ _Yes, that! You'll find that things are going to be running a lot smoother around here now that I've taken care of some minor details. So there's no need to be using that scrappy piece of hardware anymore. Walk your pretty-self over to the nearest elevator and we can get started right away on testing. And don't worry about your friend down in the central chamber. He's the one assisting me run this place right now, so no need to bother him. He's being very helpful! A true friend to science!”_

Mel's fists clenched together when Virgil was mentioned. The red lights of the facility around her flared up to a brighter setting until they were burning to stare at. The human looked away, the area around her resembling a photographer's darkroom workshop and it was stinging her eyes to stare at it for too long. The floor beneath Mel shook and slid out from under her and she landed in a stark, white-lit room that vastly contrasted the black and red they'd been standing in. The testing droids had better reflexes than an exhausted human would have and were only just able to jump out of the way in time. Mel blinked against the bright light, which was practically blinding after she'd been in the dark for so long. She'd been placed in a typical testing chamber that looked like a simple faith plate puzzle over a pool of toxic waste. Even just glancing at it Mel had solved the whole chamber already in her head, but she refused to move. After taking a quick glance up at where Atlas and P-body were looking down into the chamber at her, she glared at the red-eyed camera in the corner.

“ _Oh, don't be like that. Look, it was my mistake putting you in such an advanced chamber from earlier. I just assumed that by now you would be a highly skilled tester on these tracks, but here I've put us back to the beginning with an easy-to-solve puzzle. Just trying to ease you back into the groove. What do ya say, Olympian Bronze Medalist? Surely, this isn't too much for you to handle.”_

Whether she could handle it or not was not the issue and she wasn't going to humor him any longer. With everything going on, she was going to ignore any further questions that came to mind like, 'Why is Cave Johnson alive and speaking to her over the intercom? Was he alive or was he a machine like Virgil?'. To someone that wasn't fending for her own life and the artificial lives of the facility, these would be some very pressing questions, but her current concern was how to get out of the chamber other than the obvious route.

There was a high trill from above Mel and a red portal was popped onto the the wall beside her. At first there was nothing through the center ring except the bright, sunburst energy on a white surface. After a moment an opening appeared into somewhere dark and with cool, stagnant air. Mel looked up to see P-body waving at her. The two robots had been looking for another moon rock surface since Mel had fallen in and had found one by pure luck. The downside was it would put Mel much further away from the central chamber. It was a clean cut across a large pit and then downwards on a catwalk heading towards a giant, metal pipe as thick around as a house. Mel would come to realize all of this when she leaned through the portal to get a look at where it would lead her. She'd take her chances. Mel waved at the testing droids and jumped through, having no other choice. She waited on the other side for Atlas and P-body to follow her. They had every intention to, and Mel saw through the red side of the portal the bots jump down into the test to go after her. The very moment they hit the black, tiled floor of the chamber a large, flat panel with giant spikes melded under it came down on the robots and crushed them into pieces. Mel jumped back, horrified with the sudden, violent act and the Portal immediately closed and disappeared in front of her eyes. Mel's chest heaved with her out of control breathing from the scare and an over-worked heart beat. The man over the intercom spoke up in a casual tone that suggested he had not just smashed two sentient robots into scrap metal.

“ _As you can see, testing with droids is not real science. But neither is running around the walls of this place and hiding out like a rat. We only just got rid of the last guy that was doing that, we don't need another squatter in my facility. If you aren't going to test then you can't be here.”_

That sounded cryptic. Mel was not going to stay in one place and find out what he had been implying. She entered the opening of the giant pipe, finding in the dim light an iron ladder that she could climb to the top. It was her only escape route, there for she did not hesitate to start climbing. The question hung over her about what she was going to do once she had reached the top. The facility was dark. It would have been the easiest thing to take the wrong step and plummet into a deep pit and she no longer had eyes or ears on where she needed to go. The ladder to the top was easily over one-hundred feet high, but she had taken steeper drops than that. Getting to the lid was tedious and on one more than one occasion she had to catch herself from blacking out and would quickly hold a tighter grip on the metal bars. She hoped she was going in the right direction. It was the only thing she could hope for at this point.

When Mel reached the top she opened a trap door above her, though it was solid and weighed a ton. She was sure that had she been here at the beginning of her time in Aperture that she would have had no problems lifting it, but she had to give it a few shoves before finally nudging it far enough that it fell open on its own the rest of the way. Mel crawled out of the pipe space and rolled over onto her back to catch a breather. She got on her elbows and pulled herself towards a corner of a wall beside her with plants hanging down over it to take five minutes. Just five minutes was all she needed. The Mainframe, Aperture, all the robots, her doom, and Virgil...they could all wait on her for five God forsaken minutes. While she took a moment to breathe, she noticed something funny about the plants that hung from the ceiling.

Huh. Potatoes.

There was a flash of light and Mel jumped. She coiled back, getting on a knee and ready to jolt at the first sign of trouble. The light was a warm orange color and Mel's heart skipped a beat when it cascaded in fragments between the low growing potato plants hanging from the ceiling. Her first thought was the hope that Virgil had broken from the mainframe and had come to help her, but she realized that the movement of the light was too smooth for anything with feet. Along a management rail that she had not seen in the dark until now was a core with an orange optic; one that came to a stop and stared right at her. Unfortunately, it was a core she had the displeasure with meeting before.

“You don't look so good, human.”

Mel got up, ignoring Nigel completely and carrying on her way to find the central chamber. She went the way the management rail had, since it was the only passage she could see, but that meant the core could follow after her. Mel hoped he wouldn't, and she didn't care to wonder how it was that he was still functioning when the other cores were not and how he had gotten out of his box.

“Now, I know what you're thinking. Why is it that I am functioning just fine and how did I get out of that weighted storage cube. Well, I know that you can't ask me these things because you're mute and all, so I will answer them for you.”

Mel sighed.

“You see, I was not hooked up to my management rail when the Mainframe issued the other Personality Cores to shut down because they had put me in that box. So, when I heard what had happened I simply freed myself with one of the factory claws and – BAM! Here I am! Happy and free! Hanging around what is essentially the Aperture apocalypse and ready to help you--!”

Mel turned swiftly around and pointed a finger at him, glaring so ferociously the core shut his trap, so to speak, scooted backwards on his rail. Mel swung her portal gun at him a few times, just barely missing while he pleaded. She'd found hitting robots with her Portal device had been very effective in the past.

“Wait! No! Its not like that anymore! I'm here to help! I know where the central chamber is! I can take you there!”

The woman stopped swinging and stood there. As much as she wanted to smash this ball into a flat cylinder piece like someone stomping on a tin can, she was willing to hear him out if it meant reaching the chamber. Nigel blinked a few times, waiting to see if she was finished before continuing. “Look, this place is going to the dogs. I am not damaged, I can see that we're all about to be in for a very bad time. I don't want that. The other cores don't want that. YOU don't want that. I can show you to the chamber and you can make everything normal again. That's all I want. To manage my testing track and to not _die._ I am being about as sincere as I can possibly be right now.”

Mel wasn't having it, and she turned around to leave him behind again. She suspected that the management rail would split at some point and she could trail away from him. As she walked away, Nigel called frantically after her.

“No! Wait! Lady! Stop! Hole! HOLE!”

Nigel's flashlight flicked on just as Mel stopped. The dark red hues of the atmosphere around her suddenly turned into a sharp streak of white light and black shadows, with no color variation in between. Everything was completely monotone. Looking down at where her shadow stretched out far in front of her it was split in half by a menacing black hole ripped straight down into the floor of the corridor. She didn't want to guess at how steep of a drop it must have been, but she turned to Nigel, clearly spooked from nearly falling into it. Nigel shook his eye at her, looking both annoyed and proud with himself.

“See? You can't go anywhere right now and you don't have any other options. Every core in this place is pretty much dead to the world unless the Mainframe decides otherwise. I was lucky! Now are you going to follow me or am I wasting my time here?”

Mel's shoulders fell, totally defeated. She didn't want to give him the satisfaction of any kind of response outside of a simple, but to-the-point, nod of her head.

Fine. Lead.

“You _are_ sensible, then.” Nigel was very pleased with himself at this point and turned around to scoot down along his management rail. “You're going the wrong way, anyway. There's a turn up here. Just follow me and tread lightly. This place is coming apart...again. We don't get any action for decades and suddenly two humans wake up and everything goes bananas a few months apart from each other. Are you and the Tenacious Test Subject related? I mean, you both have female human parts and...well, I was going to say you both wear your hair up, but it looks like yours isn't anymore. Its a nice look for you, by the way. You should wear it down more often. Okay turn over here. Maybe I can find you some citranium while we're wandering around here. You look like someone that appreciates soda...”

As much as she hated this core, Mel could not deny that she liked hearing the robots of Aperture ramble as she walked. Maybe not a couple dozen at once, but to have one give her some radio white noise while she traveled was always nice.

As Nigel had promised her, Mel began to recognize parts of the facility that lead to the central core chamber. She could see the blazing white lights of the dome shaped room far ahead and seemed to be the only place in Aperture that was still fully lit up anymore. Up until now the facility looked feverish with its dark reds, which looked to be pulsating, but could have easily been a trick of her tired eyes. She and Nigel reached the single long corridor that lead to what used to be GLaDOS' station and Mel could see at the far end into the bright room Virgil standing at the center with not a single expression on his face or twitch of his fingers. All there was to be seen was a blank room and the single assist droid motionless in the middle of it all. Mel was cautious. She wondered if he was capable of attacking her.

Mel turned to Nigel, her eyes burning wordless questions into him and waiting for his response.

Nigel wiggled his handle-bars at her. “See? I took you right to him without any problems! Whether you decide to go in or not is your issue. I'm not following. I will tell you one thing, though. I wouldn't be so hasty to go in here. The Mainframe probably has this place rigged-ded-ded-ded- _dddddddddd-d-d-d..._ ”

Mel faltered as Nigel's voice rapidly started to sputter and cut out. The woman's gut dropped when his orange optic suddenly turned red and he went uncharacteristically quiet. She waited for him to say anything more, and even reached her portal device up to tap the side of his hull, but there was nothing more from the Tag Core.

She was trapped. For once, she did not believe Nigel had meant for her to be trapped and genuinely wanted to see her solve their problems, but that didn't change the fact that she had nowhere to go. It all seemed rather hopeless. She stood in the center of the split in halls and wondered which path to take. To go into the central chamber was obvious suicide. There could be any number of things waiting for her, planted there by the mainframe. She could attempt to leave. Find a way out herself, but her chances of succeeding were so little. Not with how things were right now, and not without help. She could test. She was so good at testing. She was confident that she could go through every puzzle in this place and solve them all. She could run around the tracks like a rat in a maze and satisfy the Mainframe.

But that was not Mel. She would not back down and she would not stop fighting with fang and claw. She was raw and mighty and among the best of athletically gifted humans of her generation. Mel was an Olympian. She felt it with every stride that she took into the central chamber. She felt it with every beat of her heart that she would conquer. Her steely blue eyes focused on Virgil and she did not flinch when she entered the chamber and the panels to the corridor closed behind her, locking her inside. Everything was still and quiet. There were no portal surfaces for her in here, rendering her gun useless unless she decided to throw it again. And she did.

Mel tossed her gun and it landed on a panel half-way towards Virgil's still android body. There was not so much as a single beat when the floor from bellow the gun erupted in an explosion of fire. Mel did not flinch, the fire disappearing and as the smoke cleared she heard Cave Johnson chime in over the intercom. Every time the Mainframe spoke it sounded as if it were trying to explain simple instructions to Mel in a reasonable tone that was exceptionally unfitting for the malicious deeds it was actually performing on her.

_“So I decided to test out an idea one of my previous avatars had where he booby-trapped one of the stalemates and I thought I would give it a whirl, but it seems like it wasn't one of the best ideas in my library. Looks to me like a majority coming from him weren't, to be honest. Kudos for trampling that so quickly, though. Lets look at some of what She had...hm...Well, good news is I don't plan on using neurotoxin gas. Its been wildly ineffective in the past and its unorthodox, too. Regulations do not call for toxic gasses when shutting down a threat. We'll go for something a little more classy.”_

Mel was too tired to really give two hula-hoops about the regulations behind neurotoxin, just that she was relieved it wasn't being used on her again. The effects from the last time she'd inhaled it were still making her sluggish and hadn't been helping when pushing her physical limit. She'd even caught herself violently coughing on occasion. She did, however, have to wonder what he meant by 'classy'. The little voice from behind Mel was enough to tip her off.

“ _I see you.~”_


	18. Chapter 18

Dr. Aadland had never been much of a coffee drinker until he'd taken this job. Now he could practically have it hooked up to an IV in his arm and he wouldn't have known the difference. Actually, that may have been one of the many upcoming tests. He wasn't sure. So many design ideas were passed under him during the course of one day that it was hard to keep track anymore. That was the thing with being the lead engineer, everyone wanted your opinion on one thing or another. Nothing he could take credit for, either. Even in death, Cave Johnson's name had been plastered all over the company and would take any accomplishments with him down the next few generations. Didn't matter if he was around for it anymore or not.

No fame in the name of science. We are here to change the world for the the better and...yada yada yada...That song and dance. Their current CEO was Cave's former assistant, but he was one of the few peopole who knew very well that she was in line of the lab's experimental chopping block. Cave's instructions. He was barking orders from beyond the grave and people were still following them. Aadland was over it.

Dr. Aadland reached for his mug of coffee, only to find that it, as well as three others on his desk, had been emptied. It seemed the pot he'd brought with him into his work space was no longer full either. Had he even eaten yet today? The shaking of his hands and the knot in his stomach he was only now aware of told him that he had not.

“Whatever. Its an easy fix. I'll just go by the cafeteria.” He needed to not get too worked up anymore. If he got too overheated and wasn't getting the right nutrients he could fry his brain. A lot of the newer scientists didn't have that issue, considering they were usually young interns that were just barely out of college. The more he thought about it the more Dr. Aadland began to realize he had gotten pretty grumpy about his seniority. He was going to end up talking like his--

Dr. Aadland's entire body twitched with one of his eyes. There had been a thought, but it had passed. Or it had been cut short. A fraction of a memory he did not fully possess, possibly?

His father. That's who he was thinking of. He was going to start sounding like his father. Now he was sure he needed to grab a bight to eat. Maybe actually drink some water.

Either way, the afternoon was off to a bad start and he was already in a foul temper. It was just one he'd have to keep to a low simmer until he found something to eat. The engineer went to a large monitor in the room, using the keyboard to type into the computer and pull up a message for any other scientists that came in to see him for help while he was out. They appeared in bold, glowing yellow letters against a burnt orange screen and would be hard for anyone to miss.

'GONE TO THE CAFETERIA. STAND BY.'

Dr. Aadland stood up from his swivel chair and grabbed a white lab coat from a hook beside his computer, slipping it on over his dark red oxford and fixing the collar straight so he looked at least somewhat presentable. The man moved for the door to leave his lab, but paused at the door. His hand gripped the cold, polished metal of the door handle, but did not turn it. His thoughts wandered to his project, and he turned around. His lab was much more spacious than most others in the facility with a round width and high ceiling. From the center of it all hung wires and cords of all lengths and thickness that attached themselves to a pile of robotic parts on the floor. It lay spread in an uncoordinated line of machine parts like a dead snake carcass, and the sight of it made him tense up.

This was it. His magnum opus. An artificial intelligence with a personality map that was going to be stemmed and harvested from a living human brain before being broken into fragments and converted into a disc. A single, plain disc that could be mistaken for something you could keep music on. Those hadn't been released to the general public yet, and would not for a couple more decades, but the technology was there and he was going to utilize it to keep the intelligence of someone who was currently alive and insert it into a computer. Or, that was the idea. They had tested the technology out on some test subjects already, but none of the personalities had survived the conversion yet.

This was the true origin of his dour demeanor. The thing that had plagued him into fueling his body off of coffee and protein bars with little sleep in between. At first, to be given the job was like any other he'd taken. The paper work was filed on what its function must be and his trade in life was to figure out how to make it happen. Even the thought of an actual human intelligence being used from former employees was nothing he had blinked at, considering he had seen so much worse done to test subjects over the course of his employment in Aperture. So why was it bothering him now? Why was it that every time he looked at this thing he felt his skin crawl and his blood run cold? What about HER made his spine ache and his stomach churn? His hands became clammy where they held the doorknob and he finally released it to turn around. He stared at the optic of the headpiece that was facing him from the floor.

“Why are you doing this to me?” He was shaking and his hand gripped his stomach, the scientist doubled over from the sickness he was feeling. “What is it about you that is driving me crazy? I am not crazy! I know crazy scientists, and I'm not one of them!”

He took a moment to consider that he was talking to a machine. One that hadn't even been properly turned on or given an A.I yet.

“Okay, what I'm doing right now is a little crazy. But that's because I've been locked in this room for-for-for years with YOU and I feel like you can...can hear me!” He was sure She could hear him. He was almost certain She knew everything that was going on around Her. She might have even been able to see him in this moment. He had no proof or reason to think so. For once his very logical brain was telling him that something he could not explain was very much real, and it had been creeping up on him since he took the project. He continued his tirade at the robot on the floor. “You can hear me! I know you can! You're just sitting there waiting for us to turn you on so you can release your wrath on the Enrichment Center, right? Because we're going to put a living, breathing person into a-a computer! Its....its sick....”

Dr. Aadland thrust a hand into his hair and tussled it around nervously. He'd kept his hair back in a ponytail so he could prevent himself from doing this as often, but that didn't save his uneven bangs from being fussed over. His other hand gripped his forehead. “Its sick. This is sick. Its all sick. There's going to be more like you. All over the world, even. Minds jammed into a compact disc. People are forced to dodge bullets and endure toxic waste and are hooked up to IVs filled with coffee. Its all insane. This place is just...insane. Why am I even here? What am I doing here?”

Was it the lack of sleep that had made him crack? Was it the neglect of basic food groups in his diet that snapped his psyche in half? Possibly. It was hard to say for sure. There was only the here and now, and Dr. Aadland had run over to grab his swivel chair from the floor. The man lifted the chair with both arms as high off the floor as he could manage and was ready to bring it down on the heap of robot parts on the floor before him with a furious yell, adrenaline pumping through him and was ready to tear the machine to pieces if he had to.

“ _ **Don't... Even... Think about it.”**_

Virgil stopped.

The lights in the room dimmed and he felt his arms freeze up. He dropped the chair to the floor and watched the machine parts slowly pull themselves together and lift off the ground. The headpiece was the final part to rise and a bright, yellow optic bore into him coldly. _**“I am infinitely over you and the human throwing things at me. Stop it.”**_

Virgil could feel his mind being warped and he back up, his feet walking through the chair on the floor when he should have tripped on it all together, but he didn't seem to notice. He shook his head at GLaDOS, his mouth agape and pale in the face. His eyes had gone from a dull green to bright, glowing goldenrod and soon his vision was tinted the same bronze-like yellow. He tried to speak, but he could only bring himself to spill a jumble of vowels around in a messy pile on the floor. GlaDOS was more than happy to make up for his inability to talk and spoke up again herself.

“ _ **Congratulations on proving to me and the rest of the facility that you are possibly more incompetent at running the Mainframe than the Intelligence Dampening Sphere was. I did not think it was possible, and yet here we are. He at least got some testing done before he almost destroyed the facility. All you managed to do was make a mess of things. I'm not even going to waste my energy on my slow-clap processor. You've not yet earned that kind of effort from me...Sweet Heart.”**_

“I-I don't understand...” Virgil was at a total loss. Everything he had just been doing a moment ago seemed so far off, like he had been looking at copy of himself through a thick wall of glass. He didn't even know what coffee tasted like. That memory was not in his files. What had this all been? Through all of his confusion, GLaDOS' chilled, deep tone was enough to pull him back to focus on her.

“ _ **Of course you don't. You are only a fraction of some other person's intelligence. You were built to be just as benign as the other cores in this facility. You're all overwhelmingly slow. Despite the fact that you and the test subject attacked me and shut me down, I am in an exceptionally good mood right now. I will explain to you what just happened in as few and short words as possible so that your obtuse core processor can keep up.”**_

The room was slowly growing darker as She spoke. Virgil no longer wore the lab coat and button up shirt, instead appearing as he normally did as the assist droid. Everything from the seems on his joins to his malfunctioning right eye. Pieces of furniture in the lab, such as the desk and chair, had either disappeared completely or were at the very least faded. Robots do not dream, but the experience was that of waking up from one and forgetting everything in it the moment you try to think about what it was about. The harder you push to remember the more it fades. Above it all GLaDOS spoke, and Her voice echoed off of seemingly nothing.

“ _ **The scientist you just witnessed attempting to attack me did just that. I interrupted you before it could happen, but it did. He ruined billions of dollars of equipment and put the company in deeper debt than it already was, as well as setting the GLaDOS project back a few years. Well...decades, really. Instead of firing him, the scientists used his brain in their next AI conversion experiment and made a nosy, rude, aggressive, selfish little personality core that would later down the line go on to be the downfall of Aperture at the hands of the Mainframe I have been attempting to keep under my control all these years so that something like this doesn't happen. The end. Well done.”**_

Virgil shook his head, a hand gripping the collar of his jacket closed at his chest anxiously. “Th-the file in the storage room--”

“ _ **Is fake.”**_ GLaDOS interrupted him. _ **“To demolish any credit that would have gone to the scientist for his original design. No one cares about a mechanic. Just like no one cares about a simple Maintenance Core.”**_

That had stung. Before, he wouldn't have cared. Before all of this he would have brushed Her insults away, so why now was it that She could garner such a reaction from him. Maybe it was because before it would have been true, and there's really nothing he could have done about it. He wasn't upset about what GLaDOS had said, but that She was lying to him. He challenged Her with a smirk on his face. “You're wrong, lady, but nice try. There is someone.”

Through the now pitch black, translucent shell of a lab room, save for the flaring optics of the robots, an out of place sound resonated from somewhere unseen. The _rat-tat-tat-tat_ of turret bullets echoed in, but did not seem to come from any known location Virgil could see. He jumped, shielding himself from bullets that did not exist to him or the other core that shared his company, though the sound they made was faint and far off. Virgil felt panic strike him with a ghost pain in his chest where he believed a beating heart had been not five minutes ago. He had a horrible feeling he knew what that sound had meant, and his fear was fed by GLaDOS' next words.

“ _ **Well...you did, at least. Probably not anymore.”**_

 

\----------

 

Mel swiped up her Portal device from where it had landed on the other side of the room from the explosion, dodging turret bullets as fast as her legs could take her and scooped the gun into her arms in passing. She dove down into where the center of the chamber dipped to a lower platform and pressed herself tightly against its walls, shielding herself from the turrets that were elevated higher than she was. The woman watched the thin red laser points from above her wave around aimlessly until they straightened out when their target was nowhere to be found.

“ _Are you still there?”_

Mel sighed in relief at the sound of their guns tucking back into their hulls and took this opportunity to check her gun for damage. Surprisingly enough, the portal gun was still in one piece. There must have been a very good reason the only way you could destroy one of these things was to drop it down into the incineration shafts. She wasn't sure exactly what she would be using it on, considering there were no portal surfaces in here, but she could always just keep tossing it at things if she had nothing else. That seemed to work out fine for her in the past. Just keep throwing her portal device around at robots and pretend it wasn't a miracle in modern engineering. It was fine.

Despite the urgency of an obvious life or death, rather tense situation she had found herself in, Mel felt the pull of the floor bellow her and the strong urge to lay her head down and close her eyes while there was nothing shooting at her. Whether she was grateful for it or not, the Mainframe spoke up again and snapped her out of it.

“ _You may have noticed that this is a lot harder than those tests chambers I would have put you through, but that's neither here nor there at this point in the game.”_

Mel frowned deeply. What kind of sick person considered this a game?

“ _You might as well stop making things harder on yourself. It would be much more efficient and painless if you just rolled over and died. Could save me a lot of time and energy, but since you don't seem to want to come out from your little hidey-hole we're going to have to do this the hard way.”_

Mel knew that her window to act was closing. Virgil was only a few feet away. If she hurried she could avoid the turrets. When they were inoffensive it usually took them a moment to process that there was a moving target. She would have just enough time to, at the very least, drag Virgil's body down to duck with her so that she could plug the USB into his wrist. She'd bum rush him to the floor if she had to.

Getting to a knee, Mel launched herself forward and could already see the red lines of the turret lasers adjusting to shoot at her. She was almost to Virgil when a large, flat panel stood straight in front of her path and blocked her from the assist droid. Mel had only seconds to act, a bullet whizzing by her cheek and hitting the side of the panel that had emerged. As the woman moved around Virgil, more panels opened up in a similar fashion to the first until her friend was completely blocked in. On one hand, she could not reach him like this in order to hit him with the vaccine and this insanity would just continue. On the other hand, the barrier was providing more than a decent shield from the turrets on the opposite side of the room. She'd take it.

The Mainframe was ready to take that win away from her, and glad to be doing it.

“ _Are you familiar at all with rocket turrets?”_

Rocket **what?!**

Up in the higher platform of the chamber Mel could see a glossy, white contraption rise from the floor with a lime green eye that looked similar to that of the core's, though it did not seem like it had sentience. The core did not speak like the other turrets or cores could do when confronted, but it did move its body to face Mel and made a mechanical bleeping noise while it changed color from a green eye to an orange one. Her experiences, so far, told her that when the optic swapped color on cores it normally was not a good sign. A wing on its side opened and she could now see why it was called a turret as it revealed a thick, black barrel of a gun tucked away inside it. Mel jumped out of the way just in time to avoid a dynamite sized rocket blow our of the turret and blast against the paneled barrier, though with no more damage than a burnt, black smudge on the side. The rocket turret was slow to shoot, so Mel could easily have avoided it for a long standing time given the space she had to dodge it. However, the range she would have had was limited to the quicker, much chattier turrets at the other end of the chamber. More than ever she wished Virgil was awake. She'd gotten a glance of him through a small crease between panels and the assist droid continued to stand there perfectly still, and less engaging than a marble statue. Mel wanted to hear him cheer for her, or otherwise press her on. His encouragement had not always been positive, but it had grounded her. Where had he gone and would she get him back if she succeeded?

She dodged another rocket, but quickly had to dance back when the other turrets were triggered by the woman appearing in their radar. Mel gulped, stuck between a rocket and a hard place. She could hear the Mainframe becoming impatient with her and growing steadily angrier. _“Look! Its not that difficult! Its a very basic concept! Just stand in front of the rocket turret and die! Or stand in front of the other turrets and die. I've even given you options to chose from.”_

Another panel was opening, this time in the side of the chamber wall to her left. Mel rolled her head, her back to the barrier blocking her from Virgil and would have made a rather rude, frustrated noise over what could possibly be coming out of the tube that was now protruding from the wall. More rockets? Bombs? Lava?

None of those things. Nothing she would have ever dreamed could have prepared her for what she actually saw happen. The pipe that had interrupted the symmetry of the chamber splattered white liquid onto the ground, covering the dark-gray tiles in conversion gel. The woman did not have the luxury to fall into a stupor, instead acting on reflex and popping a couple of portals under the pouring gel, moving it to splatter on the walls. It was close enough to the turrets that she managed to pop a portal under their line formation and sent them flying into a corner.

“ _Owowowowow!”_

“ _I don't hate you...!”_

Mel moved around the Virgil barrier to the safe side where the rocket turret could not see her. She now had the liberty to breath and wonder what had happened. If that had been Cave's doing he would have been gloating, but the Mainframe was eerily quiet. From beside the pipe of conversion gel another panel was crudely pushed aside, seemingly by force, and the mechanical trills of the testing droids spilled out into the room from the other side. Atlas and P-body tried to squeeze in through the same opening at once, getting caught against each other and stuck for a moment until they had fallen in. The two reassembled and stumbled their way through Aperture to the best of their ability, got Mel a pipe of conversion gel, and were very literally crashing into the chamber as if nothing had happened. Mel beamed at them and stomped her boot against the ground with an enthusiastic rush of adrenaline. The woman waved and both droids mimicked her, taking a moment to return the gesture kindly but had to very quickly get out of the way when the rocket turret caught onto them. While Atlas and P-body distracted it, Mel turned around to see what she could do about the barrier.

If the rocket turret had not been enough to break the panels off from their position than she needed to go over them. Mel turned her portal device to the ever spilling tube of conversion gel and got to work. She maneuvered her portals, painting the room white and moving her way up the wall. She just had to get a good shot into the center of the barrier and she was golden. Not bronze, but golden. All the while Atlas made himself busy with keeping the turret distracted so that P-body could grab the machine from behind to either turn off the pesky thing or break it as a last resort. It came down to disassembling it and she tugged at the turret to see if it would come up from the floor, but with little success.

Through the chaos of their mission, the Mainframe's voice spoke up over the constant racket. He'd quickly gone from a calm, almost jovial tone of a confident man to a dark and simmering wrath underneath the guise of someone that once tricked people into considering him civilized.

“ _You can penetrate that barrier. Go ahead. Just try it. See what happens, kid. You can vaccinate that sorry hunk of garbage in there, and then what? I will still be here! Every passage way, every test chamber, every dark corner, every artificial intelligence in this place...it will always be me! As long as you are here there is nothing else but me! You can run and hide from it for as long as you like, but I will not die!”_

Mel ignored the voice, and for good reason. She'd done it. She had painted the chamber enough that she found a way to fling herself inside the barrier. Taking a running start at a blue portal she'd placed on the floor, she jumped inside and from the orange one on the ceiling she dropped at an angle into the ring with Virgil. However, the two of them were not alone.

“ _Hello?”_

Standing between them with its back to Mel's friend was a single, solitary turret with its laser pointer aimed directly at her. Mel had gotten so comfortable with the more docile turrets. In the small fraction of time she had her mind wandered to the two in the hallway from when she was looking for Virgil that sang to one another. Despite looking the same, this hostile turret was nothing but a machine to her. Mel's first reflex was to place a portal, ANY portal, bellow the turret to get it out of shooting range of her. While she had succeeded in throwing it out of the barrier circle, it had not happened quick enough.

Rat-tat-tat-tat-tat!

Mel was hit. She wasn't sure how many times or even where, but she knew she'd been shot. Immediately the woman's vision dulled and she sank to her knees while her portal gun dropped to the floor. She was too numb to notice much pain, except for a small pinching sensation in her stomach. While she could still see colors, no matter how blurred they were, she focused on the android standing a couple feet away from her. Mel's shaky hand reached clumsily into the breast pocket of her jumpsuit and pulled from it the vaccine.

The Mainframe celebrated her downfall.

“ _I will never die, but the rest of you die too easily.”_

 

 

\----------

 

“I have to get out of here! Where's the stupid exit?!”

“ _ **There is none.”**_

“You're lying! Literally everything out of your verbal processor is a lie, Madam Cranky-Wires! Lying-Cranky-Wires!” Virgil whirled around on GLaDOS and pointed an accusing finger at Her. The lab was still dark and translucent like the blue print sketch of a room rather than the finished product. He'd already tried going through the one exit, and nothing. He'd tried throwing a piece of furniture at the door, but when he went to pick one up it went right through his hand. Now he was taking it out on the one person stuck in there with him. “I need to get to Mel before she's killed out there! You're the one in charge, why don't you like...command us out of here or something?!”

“ _ **I'm not in charge right now. You are.”**_ GLaDOS was abnormally unfazed by everything that was happening around Her. Virgil had expected Her to be furious, but She hadn't acted out since She'd made Her presence known. She'd been rude, but non-confrontational. _ **“Besides, you claim yourself a competent hacker. Hack yourself out. See how it goes.”**_

“I've already tried that and—wait.” Virgil narrowed his eyes at her. “I'm not in charge, and since neither are you...The Mainframe is.”

“ _ **The Mainframe cannot run the facility by itself, idiot.”**_ Despite having a few drops of venom in Her tone, She still remained fairly tolerant of his outbursts. _**“It always needs an avatar. You are technically hooked up. He cannot boot you from your job. Only put you temporarily on lock down. That is how this place could still be running while I was supposedly dead for all those years. Be sure that the moment you wake up...IF you wake up, you will be put back in charge. Nothing will have changed. Boo-hoo.”**_

Virgil shook his head, absolutely beside himself at the thought of it. What if he lost control again? He couldn't risk that a second time. “I can't be in charge of this place!”

“ _ **I know...”**_

“How do I prevent it?” He'd gone from insulting the other core to pleading for an answer from Her. “Please, I can't go through with this again. I didn't even mean to the first time! It was completely by accident!”

“ _ **I'm aware, metal ball. And shouting is really unnecessary. You can lower your voice.”**_ She really hadn't seemed like Herself. Perhaps this was Jer outside the influence of the mainframe, but Virgil was not sure whether he preferred this GLaDOS or the old one. The old GLaDOS he could at least read a little better. _**“What you need to do is agree to put me back in power. Only mutual cooperation from both sides will do the trick.”**_

Virgil hadn't found much in the past few hours at all funny, but somehow She had gotten him to chuckle. The core held his chest, a small, breathy giggle escaping while he slouched forward. “You? Back in power? You're telling me that I have to agree to that? Otherwise it won't happen?”

“ _ **That is correct.”**_

“Um, than no. Not a chance. No way in robot hell. Literally, picture this, the incinerator could freeze over and on that day I will still say 'no' to you taking over the Enrichment Center again. That was a good try, though.”

“ _ **Fine.”**_ GLaDOS replied plainly. _**“Don't put me back in charge. Your human friend's little cure only works for so long. I know. I've had it used on me before. Its only a temporary sedative. You'll be back in here once that happens if it decides it doesn't want you as an avatar. You'll probably have more delusions like the one from earlier. I've seen inside your files. Oh, there are so much worse ones than that. Would you like to see your transfer surgery? I could probably pull it up for you...”**_

“N-no!” Virgil quickly put his hands up desperately. “No, that's okay. I think I already saw that. Would like to not see it again if I can help it.”

“ _ **All the same, I will not harm you if you decide to give me back my body.”**_ GLaDOS continued. _ **“No tricks. I will let the human escape, if she is still alive to go anywhere at all.”**_

Virgil was just about ready to argue with Her when he noticed that the hand he'd put up to express his attitude in Her direction had started to fade into square chunks and fragments. Virgil let out a wail and backed up. When he looked to GLaDOS to question Her on it the same thing was not happening to Her. It was only effecting him, for whatever ludicrous reason, and he wanted an answer. “W-what's going on?!”

“ _ **The Mainframe has been vaccinated.”**_ GLaDOS responded. _**“Last chance, Metal Ball.”**_

He was quickly dispersing, bits of him flying into the nothingness that made up their prison. Virgil wrung his hands as he thought, a tingling sensation running from his wrist and into the rest of his body. Things were happening too quickly and he felt as if he didn't have a straight answer for Her with how torn he was.

“ _ **Well...?”**_

 

\----------

 

Virgil's eyes shot open.

The barriers had lowered and the first thing he'd observe was Atlas and P-body stomping on what appeared to be an old rocket turret, or at least what used to be one. The weapon was in pieces on the floor and Atlas kicked a chunk of it to go flying across the room in a sad clatter when it hit the floor. When they had thoroughly demolished the rocket turret and were satisfied with their work the testing droids threw each other a high-five in celebration. The other thing Virgil could see from where he stood was that the chamber was a mess with bits of turret everywhere, burnt marks from the rockets on the walls, bullet holes in everything, a gel pipe sticking crudely out of the wall panels while it continued to drip, and white conversion gel splattered from floor to ceiling like modern art. It had been absolute chaos. Like the aftermath of a hurricane. A Mel sized hurricane, he had to guess.

There was an itching sensation on his lower arm and Virgil raised his hand as if he'd been bit. He pushed his sleeve up to look at his wrist, finding the thumb drive still sticking out of the port under his skin. The USB was smudged with a dark red liquid that trailed down his wrist and into the palm of his hand. Making a disturbed noise at whatever the heck was dripping on him, the android plucked the vaccine from his wrist and stuck it in the pocket of his jacket while he wiped the red smudge off on his pants.

When Virgil had looked down a dark image on the floor caught his eye. He attempted to lift his foot to turn, but there had been a weight on it and he was forced to shift his torso around instead. Sprawled out along the cold tiles beside Virgil was the pitiful, limp figure of the human, Mel. She was on the tiles in a way that was not unlike how Virgil had found her down in old Aperture after she'd exhausted herself, only now she was leaking something red along the floor. The same substance Virgil had seen on his hand. The assist droid was having an incredibly difficult time processing all of these pieces together, or something refused to see them in one large scale and couldn't possibly be connected. However, even the more dense cores knew dysfunction when they saw it, human or not.

And when it all hit him....Oh, the Creator, did it ever hit him.

“M-Mel?!” Virgil hastily dipped down with a hand to the woman's shoulder and shook it to try and earn a response from her. None came and he was already panicking. Virgil was on his knees and pulling Mel up, struggling with her weight. He got her back pressed against his chest and both of his arms wrapped around her waist. He observed the wound, much like he'd do when he'd see a broken robot come into his repair wing, but this didn't look like something he could fix. He didn't even know where to begin with humans, their anatomy was completely different. Her fluids didn't even look the same. He knew just what to do before. Finding fuel was easy and the concept was incredibly simple. Find something for her to put in her body so she'd have more energy. This wasn't the case at all. She truly was broken this time.

“Come on, Mel! Come on! Not now! Don't do this right now! I can't fix you this time!” Like earlier, the ghost pain in his chest returned. He felt like a pressure was building up inside of his body. There had been a time in another life where he was capable of releasing it, but his current body was not built for it anymore. A function the scientists must not have found a use for, but he could not place a finger on what it may have been. It felt terrible to not be relieved of it, all the same.

Atlas and P-body stood off to the side, both feeling guilty for not having noticed the humans condition up until Virgil had pulled their attention over with his distress. Their limbs shifted awkwardly, unsure of what to do with themselves, but both quickly jumped out of the ways when something opened from above them. The activity pulled Virgil's attention away from Mel long enough to watch as wires poured down from the ceiling like sleek, black vines. Polished, white plates melded to robotic parts pulled themselves together into one mass and lowered into the center of the room, just above the dipped platform where Virgil sat with Mel cradled protectively against him. The Maintenance Core glowered, fear and regret struggling past what he'd put up as a strong front as a white and black visor with a yellow optic turned to him and the human. GLaDOS, with all of Her mass and power, stared him down silently.

Things were tense. Virgil immediately started to add up the repercussions of his decision and was preparing himself for the worst. For just about ages the two glared at each other with not a single word between them, but GLaDOS was far more impressive with the sheer royalty of Her presence, however crippled it may have been after being kicked off Her throne. Finally, She spoke.

“ _ **The human's health care center, you little idiot.”**_

Virgil had still been shielding Mel from GLaDOS with the side of his arm, whatever good that did, but when She'd spoken to him he relaxed. “Um...s-sorry, what?”

“ _ **The medical bay. Get her out of my sight before I change my mind.”**_

Virgil's eyes widened at Her and quickly collected Mel from the floor like he'd done earlier. He knew that he would not be strong enough to carry Mel all the way to the medical bay, at least not with how fast they needed to get there, and instead ran over to P-body to hand her over to the tall testing droid. “P-body! Atlas! Human's health center! Stat!”

The two testing droids were always eager to follow instructions, it was part of their programming, and if they were being asked to hurry to the medical bay then they knew the best short cuts for it. Virgil was about ready to run after them when the monotone of the central core's voice caught him mid step.

“ _ **Metal ball...”**_

Virgil hesitated, but he was in a hurry so he turned around to humor Her one last time.

The chamber was already starting to clean itself up now that She was back in power, and the central core hung there as if nothing had changed. All of their efforts to kick Her off the Mainframe had been a disaster, only for Virgil to cave in the last few seconds and agree to Her coming back online. He felt about as low as he could possibly be, and Her next words to him was one final kick while he was down.

“ _ **We are going to forget that this ever happened. Step out of your place again, Maintenance, and it will be a decade for you in the pit with the screaming robots before I decide to disassemble you. Are we clear?”**_

Virgil shivered, but he didn't dare to respond to Her now. If he said the wrong thing then She'd crush him right then in there, and now She had full power to do it. More importantly, he needed to be with Mel. He had to make sure she go to the medical bay where they could get her help. She would be okay.

Mel was a champion. She'd be fine.

 


	19. Chapter 19

“ _Mel!”_

“ _Come on, Mel! Come on!”_

“ _Not now! Don't do this right now!”_

“ _I can't fix you this time!”_

“ _MEL!”_

 

\----------

 

Mel jolted in her sleep, shaking herself from the darkness. Before, she'd heard a voice through her unconsciousness, resonating like a bad memory and only just audible to her. Far off, muffled, and shattered. Now, all she could hear was music. Loud music. The woman groaned, wiping the sleep from her blurry, groggy eyes and reached out for whatever was causing the racket. Everything was much too bright, so she was forced to shut her eyes for the time being, her arm flailing to her right and grabbing hold of a smooth, half-oval radio with an antennae. It was playing some kind of noisy, obnoxious salsa dance music and it was quickly blaring a migraine past her ears. Mel searched for an off button and the music died, but she would not be left in silence for long. She could hear water, wind, and birds. Not just any birds, but the cry of seagulls.

Mel slowly sat up, feeling the soft, cushioned surface of a mattress beneath her. She had a thin, white sheet draped over her, and as she put a hand to her brow to protect her eyes from the light she was welcomed with an overwhelming mass of the deepest, brightest blue she had ever seen in her life. Once her vision had adjusted, a gasp filled her lungs.

The futon-like bed that she had awoken from stood on a flat deck of wooden boards, but of limited width. The walk only stretched a few yards until it hit sand, and beyond that was a wide, clear cerulean ocean as far as the eye could see. The skies were pale blue with white, puffy clouds skimming over the water and palm trees grew out of the sand and reached for the bright sun above them. Mel turned in her seat on the bed, finding that she had woken up on an absolutely miniscule island with no other landmarks in sight. The boarded part of the island came with a colorful, striped umbrella folded on one side of her bed and a small, round tea table on the opposite end. There was a simple, wooden booth a few feet away that Mel could have sworn should have been a  bar, but she saw no bottles behind the counter. It reminded her of the Hawaiian vacation that she had taken in celebration of her bronze, but to see the ocean now was absolutely wild to her.

Mel ran a hand along the mattress she lay on and to the sheets that folded down to her knees when she had sat up. Finally, she remembered the bullet wound and pressed a hand to her stomach. It was then that she not only realized that the wound was no longer there, but she was in a thin, floral night gown. All of this was far beyond her comprehension.

Had she died? Did the turret kill her and this was her piece of heaven? A tiny, little tropical island in the middle of a vast ocean with nothing but a cocktail bar?

She could get used to that.

There was an electrical buzz from somewhere above Mel, much like the static of a broken radio, and after it had mellowed out a more than familiar voice called down to her over an intercom she could not yet see.

“ _You're awake! Oh, finally! You took one hard nap there, Mel! How are you feeling?”_

The woman was overjoyed to hear Virgil, as well as relieved now that she knew he was okay. However, Mel's brain told her that if Virgil was speaking to her over an intercom than she must have been indoors. Her eyes, on the other hand, told her that she was outside in the middle of the ocean. She recalled the illusion GLaDOS had made when she and Virgil had thought they'd escaped to the surface through one of Nigel's air-ways. The outside had seemed so real, but in reality it had been a screen wall fixed to look like they had legitimately left. Mel carefully stepped down from her bed, reaching for it when her feet hit the floor so that she could balance herself. She assumed she had been lying in that bed for some time and was visibly clumsy for it in her steps. Her feet felt like jello and her arms ached from being forced to use her muscles after such a long rest. The intercom crackled again and she could hear his distress through the static before the android had even spoken.

“ _Woah! Mel! I know you need to be constantly going like a hamster on a wheel, but take it easy! You're still recovering, there's no rush.”_

Mel looked to the sky. Really, she saw no visible speakers or cameras, but apparently he could see her. The woman tapped a finger to the top of her wrist like she was pointing to an invisible watch and then patted the mattress of her bed.

“ _How long have you been out? Um....Glitch, what day is it...?”_ There was some faint mumbling aimed away from the microphone, another voice answering Virgil. After a quick second he turned back to the speakers. _“Two weeks. We had a couple medical droids fix you up and knock you out while you healed. You don't mind, right? I mean it would have been a problem if you could talk, because the gasses would have rendered you mute, but that already happened so no harm no foul.”_

Mel would have groaned at that. She was completely over taking long winded naps like this. However irritating it may have been that she was in a two-week coma, she was quickly finding that she felt altogether rejuvenated. A little shaky, but healthy. She lifted the collar of her nightgown, blushing when she thought about being changed out of her jumpsuit. Someone, or something, had put her in this thin piece of sleep wear, but the spot on her stomach where she should have had a hole had completely sealed up into a nasty scar. There was no raw tissue, or even stitches. It looked more like the wound had been very neatly burnt shut. Mel let go of her gown so it lay against her chest again and walked forward towards the water. She stopped when a clear panel unfolded out of the wood bellow her and stopped the woman in her tracks. Virgil sassed her.

“ _Okay, we get it. You're eager to get going. Just hold tight while we move you out of there. You might want to sit back down.”_

Mel did as he said and sat back down on her bed. Little by little the scene around her slid away. The palm trees deflated and disappeared into the floor, along with the folded cocktail bar, table, and umbrella. The sky and surrounding ocean flickered off, revealing the blank screens Mel had predicted, but it seemed that not all of the water had been fake. The island sat in the center of an indoor pool of clear liquid that was now being drained out into the floor. She was hesitant to assume any form of liquid in Aperture was just plain water, so she was relieved she hadn't had a chance to go step in it. She was beginning to wonder why Virgil had asked her to sit, when the floor beneath her jolted. Clear glass walls boxed in the remaining space she had around the bed and started to move her forward along a metal track. Two of the blank screens opened up into a plain, dark gray room on the other side of the 'beach' and her box stopped in the center of it.

Everything closed up behind her, the illusion of ocean and blue skies tucked away as if it had never been there. The clear walls of her box lowered and allowed the woman to get up from her bed and walk around to inspect the room. Aside from her bed there were two doors, a bench, and a rusty, old sport's locker with the Aperture logo crudely printed on the front of it in chipped paint. Upon further inspection Mel found that there was a camera pointed at her in a corner of the room and she beamed at it with an exited wave.

Virgil laughed. _“Yes, hello. Hi there. That's me. Nice to see that you've got some pep in your step. Did you like our...medical 'bay'? Eh? Get it? Funny right? Bay referring to a body of water and...and...No? That wasn't funny?”_

Mel frowned at the camera and shook her head.

“ _Okay, never mind. Either way, did you like the screens at least?”_

This she could nod to.

“ _See! Told you it was nice! You're going to like this next part too, I'm assuming. In the locker are some fresh clothes in different sizes for you to pick out. Sorry to say, but they are all newer testing jumpsuits and yours was vintage so I couldn't find any more of them. I mean, I guess we could have found a way to wash it, but that thing needed to go into the incinerator. I hope you weren't too attached. The door directly in front of you takes you out of there, but if you go into the door on your right there's a changing room and a shower...What's up? What's wrong with you?”_

At the mention of a 'shower', Mel's bright blue eyes widened at the Virgil-Cam and she pointed hastily at the door of question. She mouthed to him the word a couple of times, absolute disbelief on her face.

“ _Uh, yes, yes. Sh-ow-er. There's a shower in there with hot water and soap--”_ If he'd wanted to say anything else he wouldn't have had the chance. Mel had turned her back to the camera and gone to the locker, fishing out an orange jumpsuit and tank top in her size and made a bee-line for the door with the shower room. The door slammed quickly behind her and Virgil was left again to his own devices and more than a little startled by her reaction. _“A-alright. Bye then.”_

It was a little over an hour before Virgil saw Mel again, but the core had waited two weeks for her to fully heal from her injuries and wake up. Another hour had been nothing when compared. When Mel did walk out of the dressing room a billow of steam followed her feet out. The human had slipped into a jumpsuit that didn't fully fit her and was a little baggy around the legs, but they were made long for boots and she was currently barefoot. Mel was tussling her hair up with a towel, drying it off and creating a mane of auburn curls that fell over her head, back, and shoulders. However, while it was still a little damp, she took a hair tie from where she'd been holding it between her teeth and put it all back into a bun. She knew better than to walk out of this room and back into Aperture with hair hanging over her eyes, no matter how good she currently felt.

Virgil spoke up and caught her attention again. _“Ah! There you are! Is that better?”_

Mel put a hand to her shoulder and rolled it around, loosening up the tension in it and smiled at the camera dreamily. The woman was practically walking on clouds, at the moment, and Virgil was not too dense of a core to not recognize it.

“ _I'll take that as a yes! We salvaged your boots. They're on that bench along with your portal gun. Get geared up and meet me outside...Oh! And Mel?”_

She'd moved to the bench and sat down, ready to slip her boots back on when Virgil asked for her attention again. The human looked up at the camera expectantly. When the android spoke again he was much more sincere and she could perfectly imagine what his face must have been like by the amount of relief that came through.

“ _Its good to see that your okay. You had me really worried for a bit there.”_

Mel breathed out a fond sigh and smiled, nodding her appreciation up at the camera and brushing a lock of hair out of her face to tuck behind her ear. She got her old long-fall boots tied up and buckled on and lifted the portal gun from the bench surface beside her. She looked at the night gown and honestly considered taking it with her. It was so uncomfortable to sleep in her jumpsuit all the time, but the smart thing to do was to give it a pass. She couldn't have too much on her. She was still so sure that she was in danger at all times. Even now, rested, clean, and in good company, she was still in Aperture. There was no easy way to keep her guard down after everything that had happened to her.

She pressed the handle-bar to the exit in and walked through, finding a long, lit hallway with nothing else but another similar door at the very end, but even after passing this it only took her into an office space full of monitors and a window observing one of the surgery rooms. There were two doors and Mel was waiting for Virgil to tell her what to do over the intercom, but when there wasn't any comment from him she tried both doors. One was locked, so that was a no-go. The furthest one opened for her just fine and when she walked through she was startled by a loud noise. A recording of a party blower tooted at her out of a hidden speaker and confetti blasted down from an air vent just above the doorway where she stood. Now that she was covered in multicolored scraps of paper, Mel got a look around the room at the many glowing eyes staring at her.

The room she'd found was a large employee lounge with several sofas and armchairs, a coffee table, a kitchenette at the back with a sink and cabinets, two soft-drink machines, and a television hanging up in a corner where the wall met the ceiling. Several of the cores from earlier, including familiar ones like Rick, Jonathan, Glitchy, Music, and Rainbow, either hung along a single management rail splitting a line halfway across the ceiling or had been placed on different surfaces among the room, like couch cushions and counter tops. Atlas and P-body stood around at the back of the room, both waving to her excitedly when she'd glanced at them and Virgil was casually sitting on one of the sofas with his feet up on the coffee table, a pocket radio in his hand. He'd been smiling smugly at her and pushed a button on his talkie to speak into it, his voice echoing in from a console in the office room behind Mel. “Welcome back!”

Rick was the next to greet her with all the boisterousness of a country-westerner, which was comforting in its own strange way. “Woo-ee! Good going, Tiger!”

“Yes, well done.” Jonathan shifted his shell proudly, looking very pleased. “That was a decent enough job, for a human. You may have noticed the banner put together by us, the cores. My original idea , of course, as well as the text.”

“It wasn't all your idea.” Adventure interjected, flipping over from jovial to wry. “But I will give you full credit for the wording, though. Credit where credit is due, I guess.”

Mel was still a little stunned, and her eyes panned up to a yellow sheet hanging from the ceiling towards the kitchenette with pink lettering clumsily painted over it. It was nearly unreadable, but after some staring she was able to decipher what it said.

**'grEAt WoRK nOt bEiNg KillED?'**

With a question mark.

Virgil thumbed over his shoulder at the banner nonchalantly and shook his head at her. “I had nothing to do with that. Trust me.”

The Ego core turned to snuff at him. “We couldn't very well congratulate the human for shutting HER down like we'd originally planned, Maintenance. Last I checked She's still ticking, isn't She? What exactly happened, if you'd be kind enough to share with us?”

“Oh-- Pfft! Jeez, who knows with that. Some real craziness was going on down there.” Virgil was not ready to confess to a full room of his peers that he'd helped initiate GLaDOS rejoining the mainframe and looked away so he wouldn't share eye contact with anyone. With his cheek rested in his hand the android mumbled anxiously. “Weeiiiird...”

“I think what matters right now is that we're not all dead and that the facility isn't coming down around our gears.” Glitchy was ready to take the focus away from Virgil, since he'd been the only other person the Maintenance Core had explained the situation to in confidence that he wouldn't go around mouthing off about it. “Try a little more grace, Ego.”

“Grace, indeed. You're rather graceful when you fling yourself from your management rail into a pool of repulsion gel, aren't you?”

All the other cores had started interjecting on the conversation now, and soon the whole lounge was a white noise of each robot trying to talk over the other, save for Virgil, Atlas, and P-body. Mel's shock was gradually slipping away and she relaxed her shoulders, smiling at the robots in the room. It was the sentiment that mattered. However, the amount of chatting cores was a little overwhelming. Virgil could read her from a mile away and he sat forward, waving Glitchy down and the white-eyed core zipping over as close as he could above Virgil's head to hear what he had to say. “Let's start herding them out of here, give her some room.”

“Got it. Atlas! P-body! Let's get these guys moving. Come on everyone, party's over. Back to the usual. That's enough fun for a lifetime.”

“W-wait! I was going to start dropping some sick beats!”

“The human's got one of those brain aches, no sense in making it worse, Music. Move it along.”

Atlas and P-body went around the lounge, collecting cores from different corners of the room and hanging them back onto the rail as they all started to leave through a square hatch just above the back door. The last core to go up on the rail was the Raimbow personality and he kept his eye on Virgil as he slid out after the others. “Just wanted to mention that the assist droid suites you, Maintenance. Quite the handsome look.”

Virgil's eyelids flew up and his pupils dilated, the droid freezing and attempted to sputter a response. “Ah—um. Thanks! Yeah, uh...picked it out myself! Yup. Okay, bye!” He only just remembered to lift a hand and wave after the prism-colored personality core as he left. He immediately regretted saying anything other than a simple 'thank you' and shoved his hands up to his face with an exasperated groan.

Atlas and P-body made sure that all the leg-less robots had made it onto the management rail safely and were out of the room. When they'd finished up the testing droids ran over to Mel, each of them taking turns scooping the woman into a bone-crushing hug. She was a little more prepared for them this time and braced herself, as well as her poor bones. They'd been a great help to her in the last few hours and she fully realized that she could have very well died if it weren't for them. The same credit went to the other cores who'd grabbed her out from under GLaDOS' chamber after Virgil had been seriously hurt.

Eventually, Atlas and P-body would leave the room and the round, mechanical door closed behind them automatically. Silence came over the break room, the once crowded space now only occupied by a single human and android. Only one of them could speak, and he pointed to the kitchenette counter. “Found some cans of beans. Already opened one for you.”

She felt ravenous and was more than happy to grab the can up with a bottle of water Virgil had also been kind enough to scavenge. Mel walked over to the sofa Virgil sat on and placed her portal device down on the coffee table where he'd put his feet back up so he could lounge. The position looked comfortable, so Mel followed his example and did the same. One hand rested the can of baked beans over her stomach and the other stirred around the contents with a plastic spoon between bites. Virgil didn't seem to be very talkative right now, and she was fine with that. They both ended up laying their heads back and staring up at the tiles of the ceiling that were riddled with holes punctured into them by bored scientists throwing pencils up to see if they'd stick. For the longest time, the assist droid didn't say anything and Mel didn't urge him to. It was a silent agreement that they both could really use the time to think and process... _everything._

Everything that had happened. The past few weeks...months...decades. Everything. Even after Mel had finished eating and set the empty canisters aside she folded her hands onto her stomach and drifted into doing nothing at all. In Aperture, you could trick yourself into thinking that anywhere could be totally silent, but once you paid attention the far off sounds of machines working, building, and moving large structures around could be heard just under the radar of a pin drop. The walls teemed with veins of artificial life and the Mainframe's last words to Mel occurred to her as she thought about it. It truly had been Aperture itself, and he was right. It did not die. As long as something in these walls moved it kept on living, however twisted and morbid its existence may have been.

Virgil finally shifted an arm from beside Mel, the woman taking her eyes off the ceiling and glancing at him as he reached into his pockets. She was only just noticing that they were bulging with small items, and was the main reason behind why he hadn't gotten up since she'd entered the employee's lounge. As he dug his hands out of his deep, lettermen jacket pockets, over a dozen blocks of brightly colored sticky notes and pens spilled onto the sofa and floor. Mel snorted with a hand to her brow, and in turn cracked Virgil up, the android laughing as he picked a pink one off of him and deftly tossed to the side it at her stomach. “I know what your first question is going to be, and the answer is; flippin' days. I went through so many cubicles, you have no idea.”

Mel's shoulders were still shaking, breathy gasps of laughter finally calming down and she picked up a pen from the couch between her and Virgil. She got to work on scribbling him her first note in ages, glad to have a voice back, finally.

_That was a ride._

“Tell me about it.” Virgil pushed a hand through his bangs, looking up at the ceiling again with vexation. “How is it that nothing happens in this place in practically eons, but the moment you step out of that relaxation vault the whole facility turns upside down?”

_You woke me up. That's on you._

Virgil got a quick glance at her next note, furrowing his brow and thinking about it. “Huh...actually, that's a good point. I guess it is my fault.”

_Cores don't have arms. Who painted the banner?_

“Oh, uh, apparently Atlas found some paint and brushes in one of the retired chambers just sitting around. Odd place to find art supplies.”

_Are they upset with you at all?_

“The cores? Nah. Not most of them, anyway. Some are a little harder to please than others. I got a few calling me a vigilante instead of 'rogue core' now.”

_Vigilante or Virgil-ante?_

Virgil had to pause at that one. It took him a little longer to process misspellings, but once he'd gotten it he frowned at her. “Okay, I'll give you kudos. That was really good, but how come you can make puns and I'm not allowed?”

_I'm good at them._

Mel was rolling up the notes that she was done using into little wads and was trying to toss them into the empty can of beans on the coffee table.

_So, the Mainframe was Cave Johnson?_

“Dunno.” The Maintenance Core shrugged. Now that his pockets were free he stuffed his hands into them and kept them there. “Could have been, but who's guess is it? We've seen a lot of strange stuff happen in the past few hours, so I wouldn't outright turn away from the possibility, but I won't feed it either. Just...who knows? Who really knows at this point?”

Virgil had gone quiet again, but Mel felt like he had more on his mind to say so she kept her notes to herself for the time being. After she'd let him collect his thoughts, he continued on, carefully wording what he wanted to say.

“I'm...not...Aadland...er, I guess he's actually _Dr._ Aadland. And he was an engineer, not a mechanic. Doesn't matter.” He dismissed his own broken, wishy-washy speaking pattern and got back to the point. “Either way, I started to question if I was him after all. I kept getting pieces of his memories. When the Mainframe shut me down I finally got a good look at who he used to be when he was alive and it was my final deciding point. I'm not him, and you really don't want me to be.”

He wasn't going to go into any further detail on what he'd meant by that last comment, but he'd discovered that as adamant as he had been about NOT being the human his AI had stemmed from, any remaining confusion he may have had was officially cleared away. Dr. Aadland was not the kind of person Virgil wanted to be, so he wouldn't. It was that simple. He could feel bad for him, he could mourn him, and he could even steal his look and habits...they had different experiences. Overall, Virgil was confident that he was a better person for his. He could already hear Mel writing up her response. She had been conflicted with where he'd been on this spectrum of man against machine, so he was more than nervous to see what she had to say.

_It makes no difference. You are who you want to be._

“Wow.” He chuckled. She'd surprised him, but he should have expected that from her. He owed her that much. “That's a nice sentiment, Mel. Thanks... So? What now? Do we want to try this escape plan all over again or do we want to just stay veggies on this couch for the rest of our lives?”

_Veggies._

Mel paused, her pen of choice pressed against her chin as she looked down at the next blank note on the stack. She wondered why it was that she'd worked herself up into thinking that any of that had mattered? Virgil being human then against being an android now. She could rationalize it came from the lack of human contact she had endured for so long, but she'd just be making up excuses. After the hell they'd fought through, all of these little details seemed pretty pointless.

_Both our past lives are gone for good. I need to take care of what I have now._

“Well...” Virgil sat up, a few pens falling off of him and clattering to the floor. “What you have right now are some beans and a lot of sticky notes. But yes, I fully agree with you on that.”

Mel thought of what to write as a witty response, but the longer she stared at her notepad the further it slipped from her mind. Her writing hand relaxed, the pen almost falling from her fingers as her mind wandered. Eventually she placed the pen and sticky notes down all together and drifted to the right until she was laying on her side. Mel turned over, her face in the back of the couch cushions and curling her body towards it. Her whole upper torso raised and fell with a long, hard sigh and she closed her eyes to block out the bright florescent ceiling lights. She'd been so tired. Even with her body and wounds healed over, her heart had been taken for a rather harsh spin one too many times in the past few hours. She felt heavy and sleepy, even after resting for two weeks.

Virgil watched her and eventually reached out to put a hand on her back. He didn't need to do or say anything else, but he had the feeling that he should just leave it there for her. They were no longer in a rush, and they had done nothing but rush since day one. However, that did not mean they could just stay in one place forever. GLaDOS was willing to turn a blind eye to Mel's presence still within the building as Her and Virgil's agreement, but who knew how long that would last?

Mel reached a hand around her back blindly, Virgil following it as it seemed to search for the sticky notepad she'd put down. He could have let her keep doing that for as long as she was willing to, since her hand was nowhere near the block of paper, but he decided to be a merciful core and placed it, and a pen, on her hip where she could easily snatch them up. While she still faced the back couch cushion, her face concealed from Virgil's angle, Mel used it as a surface to write on and handed her friend another note.

_Is there anymore pumpkin pie filling left downstairs?_

Virgil had taken the note into his own hands and he giggled. He crumpled it up like Mel had been doing and tried tossing it into the beans can, but it bounced off the rim and to the floor. Virgil stood, putting some of the sticky notes and pens back into his pockets to carry with them and leaving the rest where they were so Mel could share the load. “Alright, come on Mel. Let's get you out of here. I know the couch is comfortable, but you have to get up at some point.”

_Make me._


	20. Chapter 20

It was nice to be able to walk among the facility without a large sense of urgency, especially the upper levels of the Enrichment Center where the medical bay had been. Mel recalled the overgrown chambers of plants and actual sunlight pouring in from high above. Birds could be heard singing and nesting above her head and it was naturally warm compared to the rest of the cool, draftiness of the underground laboratories. She'd admired it before, but the last time she'd seen it they were escaping AEGIS' radar. Virgil mentioned that since they were so close to the surface they may have found a way out, and even could have used the one they'd found near the security chamber, but they still had to go to Old Aperture for their vehicle. It was the difference between leaving Mel to wander aimlessly and the possibility of true survival. So they would have to start their hike to head all the way back down, which would take hours. Possibly even a full day, depending on what mishaps may happen along the way.

“Urgh...” Virgil had been ahead of Mel, leading the human around the Enrichment Center since he was the one with a map in his head, but he was disgruntled by the amount of disrepair this part of Aperture had remained. GLaDOS hadn't even bothered with the upper layers due to rot from the chambers being weathered and there was really nothing she could do about repairs if her connection was cut from it all. Hardly anything worked and he was having trouble finding a lift.

“The nearest working line of elevators is over by the Relaxation Center. With how long it will take us to walk that way we would be half way down by that point. Is nothing up here working? You know what, seeing this place now, I'm shocked we were able to get the Medical Bay turned back on. Shocked. What? Is this door not going to open either? Well, that's just great. Yet another stubborn door who's only purpose in life is to make mine miserable. You know what? Let me see if I can...”

Mel had hung back and let Virgil rant to himself as she looked around at the surrounding flora. She was shaken from her sightseeing and jumped at a loud bang from Virgil's direction, spinning around with her portal device raised in case of an attack. Virgil had his back to her and was gripping a now very bent piece of the wall from beside the round, sliding door. With a boot to the wall he managed to pry the whole plate of metal away and it dropped to the ground with a ringing clatter. In the wall was a black circuit board and a tangled web of cords in different colors. Virgil had already tried hacking the door, but when it didn't so much as give him a response the only other option he saw was to override it manually. Mel leaned over to see past his shoulder at what the core was doing, which was currently pinching a white cord and unplugging it from its port. The moment the cord was free the door beside them started rapidly opening and closing, sparks flying from the friction it was causing.

“Okay, remember that weighted storage cube we passed a few minutes ago? Can you go get that?”

Mel nodded and did what he asked, turning to head into the room on the other end of a flooded walkway from them. The water sloshed around up to Mel's ankles, the room not nearly as water-logged as other places in this part of the facility had been and was non-corrosive. It was always a plus to not have your feet melted away by toxic waste. Mel found the sad little cube sitting alone, decorated with pink pin stripes and a heart rather than the default blue circle. The woman had taken special notice of it earlier, for it was musical in nature and had been singing a little melody in their passing, however faint it was. Mel moved to pick it up when she realized something she had missed earlier on the wall just above the cube. There was a splash of color behind the heavily grown vines and Mel moved the plants aside to see another one of the paintings that had dotted Aperture in nooks and crannies that were the hardest to get to, and impossible to see if you weren't directly looking for them.

It was typical when she remembered the others she'd seen. They were normally made in very energized, erratic brush strokes with white, blue, orange, and black paint with intense imagery and cryptic messages. While she'd wondered who would have been here to make murals, such as these, she'd never taken the writing on them to a lot of thought. They just seemed like the crazy ideas of some poor soul that had been trapped there for too long. For whatever reason, this one had struck her enough to leave her hanging on its strokes a little longer than the others. It was a painting of the moon, a gold tint in color on a night sky backdrop with no stars, but little pink hearts. Crude, black words arched beneath it and looked to have been obviously painted with someone's hands rather than using a brush. The words contradicted each other and she didn't necessarily understand whatever this person was trying to say, but such is the mind of someone who'd been down here for too long.

_AUTOPHOBIA IS LOVE AS A CONSTRUCT_

Mel studied the painting with a trance over her eyes at the full, gold moon and how it reflected the last time she had seen it in the sky. She wouldn't have been able to stay for long, Virgil's voice bouncing off the walls from the room she'd traveled from.

“Hey, Mel? You okay back there?”

She had no way of shouting back a response to him to let her friend know that she hadn't fallen silently into a chasm, so she levitated the pink cube with her Portal device and headed back, the vines over the painting falling back where they'd been and hiding it again for another long, undisturbed rest.

Virgil clasped his hands together with a single clap when he saw Mel return, and grinned at her. “Great! You got it! Okay, now just stick it into the door so that we can jam it open!”

Mel hesitated. She looked down at the singing cube and pulled her lower lip out at Virgil sadly.

“What's wrong, now?”

Mel would not have been able to draw out one of her sticky note pads with how she'd been holding the gun up, so instead she nodded her head down at the cube.

For the synthetic life of him, Virgil couldn't place why she'd gotten attached to a cube so quickly. She'd seen hundreds of them. Humans were so strange with their possession over inanimate objects.“Yeeesss??? Its a cube. We're going to stick it into the door so we can continued looking for a lift downstairs. Unless you want to walk all the way down there after you just had a bullet surgically removed from your abdomen.” He took a moment to figure her out. What about this woman, in the time he knew her, would advocate the need to hang onto a storage cube? It was pink for one thing, but there had to be more to it than just that. “Is it because its singing?”

She nodded.

“Its not sentient, Mel. They don't have feelings like the turrets do. I don't know what the music's function is, but its not going to mind getting stuck in the door. Trust me on this.”

The woman still hesitated, but she wasn't going to stop listening to Virgil over a testing cube. Mel timed herself at the malfunctioning door and when she'd found the right moment she thrust the heart cube into the center, the sliders crashing against it and stuck. The force hadn't been enough to crush the cube, but apparently had knocked something loose inside it that stopped it from making music anymore. Virgil was first to go through, climbing over the cube and stepping off onto the other side of an out-of-order testing chamber that was not meant for a duel portal gun, but one of the single-shooters. Mel followed his lead once again.

They had hardly walked out of the room, after Mel had performed yet another easy cheat in a chamber she was more than qualified for, when Virgil suddenly stopped and put an arm up to force Mel into doing the same. The space before them was a long, narrow hallway with a grated catwalk running over a pool of dirtied, brown water and vertical to it on the ceiling was a management rail that bent to the right at the end of the passage and disappeared into another hallway. From beyond this turn there was some pleasant humming drifting between the walls, and not missing a beat, Virgil knelt down and picked up a chunk of debris from the floor.

Nigel was the core to appear from around the turn at the other end of the hall, and when he saw the two he lifted his bottom eyelid into the core equivalent of a grin.

“Ah! The human and Maintenance Core! Just the two I was looking fo—Aaagh! Hey!” He hollered in surprise at the ceiling fragment that was suddenly hurtled at him, but he'd just managed to avoid it by zipping to the left where he'd came. Nigel's optic shrunk initially from fear, but now he was very clearly offended. “What was that for?! You trying to knock my eye out?”

“Working on it!” Virgil called back to him while he searched for another chunk of Aperture to toss. He'd found one that he felt he could get a good distance on, but after raising his hand to toss it Mel reached out with her free arm to grab his. Virgil had all but let go of his hand to toss the debris when Mel caught his arm and he looked back at her from over his raised shoulder. He saw the woman shake her head at him. “What?! First the companion cube and now this guy? You do recognize that he's the same core that tricked us and sent us up to GLaDOS, right? I realize it might be harder for you to tell, but...”

Mel shoved her gun at Virgil for him to hold and the android nearly dropped it in his surprise. The human took a note and pen from her pocket and wrote down her thoughts.

_He helped me while you were shut down._

“Nigel helped you?” Virgil pointed at the orange core down the walkway from them, raising a perplexed brow at his friend. “ _This_ guy did?”

“ _I_ guy did, yes.” Now that Virgil had been leashed and muzzled, Nigel felt a bit more comfortable drawing in and closing the gap between them. “And I've come back to finish the job! The Boss Lady is getting a little agitated by you two just wandering around up here aimlessly, so She's given me instructions to let you use my funnels to get going-going-gone. I think that's awfully generous of Her, don't you think?”

“Does She, now? How stupid does She think we—nevermind. I already know the answer to that.” Virgil put his hands together, drawing patience from the idea that he could not pull them apart to grab a hold of Nigel to chuck him into the water under the walkway. He paused, drawing together his thoughts until he'd found something more civil to say. “Thank you. We are good. We will not be taking your airways. I trust we may be incinerated. Good day.”

“Okay, look. You can check it out for yourself. You've got that handy Wifi in this gizmo, right Maintenance? Come over here a second.” Nigel turned on his rail and started to slide away back where he'd came. Mel shrugged at her friend and was the first to go after him. They needed to go down this route anyway. Virgil dragged behind cautiously, ready to grab Mel if the he saw even a fraction of a flat surface move for whatever horror that could be hiding out of sight from them. Nigel lead them straight to the opening of a glass pipe like he'd offered them before, but the entrance was built into the floor instead of the ceiling.

Nigel stopped beside it and nodded at Virgil. “Go ahead. Trace it. See where it goes.”

Virgil huffed, but he did as he was asked. His eyes stared ahead and went blank while his vision retreated to a map of the airways. Mel found that when he did this she was not nearly as disturbed by it as she'd been before and was relieved for finally becoming accustomed to it. It was his thinking cap, and for sure he was doing wonders with it. Virgil traced the tunnel they had been brought to all the way down to an an office in the junkyards where he'd been trapped. In fact, it had been an extension of the same building. It must have only just been brought back into order, which meant it had only recently been tampered with by Nigel or Her. Virgil snapped out of it and crossed his arms up at Nigel. “Well...it takes us as far as the junkyards. Old Aperture is just a small walk away, so you're not lying.”

“See?”

“But She could just as easily re-route it once we're in there.”

“Yeah, but you can do the same can't you?” Nigel asked. “That's one of the pesky things you do these days, right? You re-route the chutes?”

“Pesky?” Virgil was about to get into it with the other core for disrespecting the system he'd set up for the incinerator when Mel tapped him on the shoulder to pull him back down again. They had other things they could be doing with their time other than arguing with Nigel. It worked, Virgil still only a few jabs away from sticking Nigel into the funnel, instead, as a guinea pig. The question now was whether they should risk it or not. It certainly would save them a lot of time, and for Mel, precious energy.

“What do you think, Mel?” If she had anything else aside from her physical prowess, she had good intuition and judgment and was borderline fearless from his perspective. If she wanted to take the risk he'd jump in with her. Mel tapped her boot against the tunnel and then nodded at him. Virgil uncrossed his arms with a huff and frowned up at Nigel. “Fine. Thanks for the tube, I guess.”

“Don't mention it!” Nigel was optimistic in his reply and could have been conceived as being genuine, had they not already known him better by now.

Mel waited by for Virgil. Virgil waited by for Mel. When he realized she'd been staring at him, as if waiting for something, he got worried. Had she changed her mind? “What's up? I don't speak eyeball.”

She frowned.

“...I mean, I _was_ an eyeball but um...okay, right. Sorry. What do you want, though?”

Mel pulled her mouth taught and tilted her head at the pipe.

“Oh, you want me to go first? AH! Yeah! Sorry! That's right! We do want me to go first!” He'd only just remembered that he'd almost crushed her by flying out the last time and stepped over to the tunnel. “Alright, then. No other way around this, huh?” He'd been hesitating still, the assist droid leaning far over the side and feeling air pulling his hair and jacket towards the mouth of the pipe.

Mel watched him bend over  and positioned herself behind the unknowing android, her tongue sticking out the corner of her mouth and lifting a boot up to his robot behind for a little nudge. Virgil yelped and fell in, getting sucked down into the vacuum and Mel quickly jumping in after him so there wouldn't be too much of a distance between them. When the screaming from Virgil had stopped and he was able to turn around at her he did not look amused. He had to shout over the rushing wind to air to speak to her. “Still super classy. You are going to stop kicking me through holes, Mel.”

She planned on it at some point.

The airway went downwards, for the most part, and though they were passing everything the facility had to offer up that would have kept them from getting down to Old Aperture in a timely manner, the trip was still a long one. Mel had a mind to keep checking on her pockets to make sure her notes were not falling out, and thankfully they hadn't. Virgil, on the other hand, had not been very chatty for the ride. This had mad the trip even less tolerable, but it was for a good reason. He'd been keeping an eye on any abnormalities that would have strayed them from their intended route, and if that happened he'd need to quickly do something about it. The android was surprised to find that towards their twenty minutes of being pushed through a pipe that they were nearly to the junkyards without so much as a blip from an outside influence.

Just as expected, Virgil was tossed out of the pipes and Mel just behind him. She'd landed on her friend, and as uncomfortable as that had been, considering how dense his body was, it was not nearly as terrible as the alternative would have been. Once they had collected themselves and got their barrings it was time to start their hike down once more through the darkness of the Aperture junkyards. Virgil was ready to make it a mission in life to end his habit of falling down here, whether it was voluntary or not. The bottom line was that it needed to just stop happening.

 

\----------

 

Virgil and Mel stood side by side staring at the faded yellow, AMC Gremlin that was more rust than vehicle. It was untouched after they had locked it back behind the vaulted tunnel door right before escaping the goo that GLaDOS had sent into Old Aperture to chase them upwards. The place was damp, but drained, and equipment was somehow still functioning even after a second flood. If anything else, Aperture tech was phenomenally durable in a pinch. It had taken the two only a couple more hours of walking to make it back down to this part of the facility from the junkyards, both still wary over how quickly GLaDOS was to start urging Mel away, but She'd been more than patient considering Her track record. Virgil and Mel were being careful not to trip-wire her wrath when they were so close to their goal.

But there were other elements that were just as terrifying as She was.

“ _If you're on your way to the relaxation vaults, don't mind the turrets! They will not fire at you! We have checked them for the ninth time this week for live rounds and they only had bullets for the first two. They're harmless! To you. We're sorry to say we're down a secretary.”_

“GAH!” Virgil stumbled back in fright, Mel just as worked up as he had been but did not have the voice to express it verbally. She raised her gun on reflex, guarding the android behind her and Virgil nearly pulling her down when he'd grabbed for her arm. The two were tense and both searching for the source of Cave Johnson's voice, Virgil eventually putting his hands to his eyes and leaning against Mel with a broken up, relieved laugh. “We...ehehehe. W-we tripped one of the prerecorded messages. Its got a motion sensor. Oooooooooh boy. Hoo! Just look at us. We're idiots. Eheheh...eheh...”

Mel had thoroughly relaxed, her heart pounding and she rolled her head to her shoulder as her panic quickly settled. She nodded in agreement, feeling ridiculous for acting up. She leaned on him just as he had been doing and started to laugh as well.

“Okay...okay...” Virgil straightened himself out and fixed his jacket. The android slipped the goggles out of his messy hair and down over his eyes. “I'm going to finish fixing the car. You start loading her up. See if you can find more gas, too. This dinky gallon's not going to do us much good.”

Mel saluted with two fingers to her forehead and placed her portal gun down on a bench so she'd have both hands for gathering up supplies. There was already the food and water Virgil had found from earlier and Mel started to carry armfuls of it into the back of the car. However, she did not take it all. She felt that even if there was the slightest chance some poor soul found themselves down here after waking up from sleeping their whole generation through, then they would need something to eat. She believed that even though she had not seen another living human in the time she'd been here, the place was insane enough and large enough to have them hiding just about anywhere.

It was another couple of hours before Virgil was done with the car, having checked every inch of it for what repairs it needed and replaced the tires. When he thought that he had reached his limitations with what he could do, the core crawled out from under the wheels with a smudge of oil on his cheek and his hair fussed up wilder than it usually was. He'd hardly noticed Mel coming by with the cans of food and loading them into the back of the car behind the passenger seat, and especially didn't notice when she'd placed a large, red plastic 2-gallon canister of fuel over by the smaller one Virgil had found earlier. Mel had been satisfied enough with her find that she had pulled one of the comfortable chairs from the lobby out of the building where she could keep an eye on Virgil and was currently sitting cross-legged in it while munching on a second can of pumpkin pie filling.

“I think that's about as good as I can get it... Woah!” The assist droid blinked at the 2-gallon can of gas and looked up to see Mel lounging in a chair a few yards away from him. “Good job! I thought for sure I'd cleaned that place out. Okay, so, we have about three gallons now so that has to beeee... if everything goes well, the best case scenario is that we could possibly get ninety miles out of that. Possibly. Again, we could just end up breaking down five minutes after we start driving.”

Mel stopped eating, studying Virgil as she thought about the choice of words he had been using. She put her can down and started writing again, Virgil approaching her while he used his black jacket sleeve to rub the oil off of his cheek. He took the sticky note from her, smudging the paper with some of the oil that had gotten on his hands as well.

_Are you coming with me?_

“I said I'd at least go with you until we find you someplace livable. I plan to stick with it. Uh, however, I am assuming that you drive, right? I honestly should have asked that earlier, because this whole thing would have been pointless otherwise.” 

Way to put the cart before the horse.

Mel gave it some thought, though, and Virgil was concerned for her slow answer. Technically, no, she'd never learned how to drive. She took the bus most places in her adult life. However...

_I can drive a tractor._

“I mean, um...I guess it's the same concept, right? Should be fine. Anyway, in case of an emergency, I am going to find a driving tutorial and see if I can't learn something. Uh, pardon me for a few minutes. This may take a little bit.”

Virgil found himself a comfortable sitting position against the side of the chair Mel had brought out of the lobby and seemed to nod off, if one could sleep with their eyes open. Again, Mel was growing more and more used to it, but while he was out, she finished off the rest of her pumpkin pie filling. When she didn't have anything else to do the human turned in her chair towards the side Virgil was sitting against and started messing with his hair. She gently pulled at and moved the spiked tufts around, noting how it certainly did feel fake, but was soft all the same. It just didn't have the same consistency human hair did. Next order of business was to slide the goggles off of his eyes and to put them on herself. The world around her was now tinted yellow and she was getting a kick out of it.

Virgil stirred and turned around with his elbow over the arm of the chair. “Perfect! I think I got the files I need... Having fun, are we?”

Mel pushed the goggles off of her eyes, past her bangs, and nodded.

“Well, they look good on you at least.” Virgil used the arm of the chair as leverage to help him off of the floor and he wiped the seat of his pants off of the dirt and dust that collected on the ground from the surrounding salt mines. He held a hand out for Mel to take, offering to help her up. “Ready to get going?”

The woman smiled, allowing him to pull her from the armchair as she nodded and handed him a note she'd written prior to him waking up.

_You were right. These are comfortable._

“It’s what I'd been told, at least. They look comfortable. Now! It’s time to test this baby out!” The Maintenance Core swept his arm around and pointed to the vehicle, animating his movements expressively like Mel had just won a brand new car rather than finding an old rust bucket. “Because we obviously couldn't find the keys I'm going to see what I can do to get it turned on. Why don't you go ahead and fill the tank up.”

While Mel emptied the contents of the red canisters into the gas tank, Virgil was only just barely able to force the driver's seat door open, the rust in the hinges creating a shrieking noise that made them both cringe. Virgil got in under the the dash and and proceeded to hotwire the vehicle. “C'mon... C'mon... Aha!”

With a 'foom' of smoke billowing out of the exhaust pipes in the back, the engine was revved into gear. It sputtered a few times before correcting itself and returning to the hum of a machine that still relied on fossil fuels instead of electricity and solar power like the rest of Aperture. Virgil knelt out the door and pulled a frown at how ugly it sounded and how much smog it produced. “This thing is literally an antique. I know it must look futuristic to you, Mel, but trust me when I say that we couldn't have found an older car that's still capable of running. Wow. Don't let that discourage you from driving it, though. It should be fine.”

Mel switched out with him, slipping into the driver’s seat and Virgil closing the door on her before going around to get himself situated. There was an argument on whether they should bother with seat belts, Virgil insisting that they should take every precaution, and eventually won. Only to find that the seat belts had been chewed away by rats. So there would be none of those. Getting the car backed out of its spot to face the tunnel was the hardest part, and they both were at a loss to find where the headlights needed to be turned on. Once Virgil had found the lights and Mel got the cart straightened out, she lightly hit the gas and slowly ushered them away from the cave and up through the spiraling tunnel.

“We haven't broken down or crashed, so that's great! We're off to a good start.” Virgil encouraged, though he looked about as scared as he did the first time they'd used the air tunnels. The android had his back pressed tightly against his seat and was gripping onto the door handle hard enough that it threatened to crack. Mel agreed that they were getting along pretty smoothly, though, and was confident enough to pick up the speed. Virgil tried to distract himself from the fear of this metal death trap either crashing or exploding, so he reached for the radio and tried to see if they picked up anything.

Nothing. Just the crackle of static and white noise.

“I-I'll leave this on just in case we get an outside signal.” He mumbled. His eyes and the optic on his chest were the only things on the inside of the car that was glowing, but everything had gone pitch black and he couldn't see Mel's face too well. He couldn't see if she was just as nervous as he was or if she was excited to be moving. The answer would have been both, and Mel leaned forward to grip the wheel so she could press the fluttering in her stomach further back. The tunnel was obviously taking them upwards in a wide carved spiral, but the darkness continued into nothing for the longest time. The two of them sat there silently after Virgil had nothing else to say, deciding it was best to let Mel concentrate. The tension and suspense built up the further up they drove and the low static frequency of the radio cut in and out.

And then Mel started to slow down again.

Ahead of them were two red lights that were obviously on a wall blocking the tunnel. Mel almost came to a stop, her gut dropping at the possibility of being trapped in there after all, but once their headlights caught the obstacle she realized that the red lights were on another vaulted door. The red turned green when they drew closer and the two halves slid away from each other and into the walls. A golden, fire tinted flash of sunlight pooled into the tunnel, both Mel and Virgil squinting against it. Mel had no choice but to hang onto the wheel, especially since she was temporarily blinded, but Virgil held a hand over his brow to block it out and instructed her to keep driving forward.

There was a steep rise in the road, but once they were over it the car evened out onto flat land. Mel slowed the car to a stop, putting the breaks on so that they could briefly get out and have a look around. They'd driven from the tunnel into a parking lot with a couple of abandoned cars sitting alone that were from the 1990's era, but only Virgil would have had this information. There was a chain-link fence that surrounded the parking structure with a tollbooth at the opening gate and a small, white building that had been the security's office and break room with the company logo faded on the side. Other than that small scrap of Aperture, there was nothing else. For miles past the gate the black, asphalt road stretched as far as the eye could see and on either side were fields of wild, yellowed wheat. The sun was setting in the east to their right side, and the sky was in gradients of orange and pink with purple clouds chasing the wind across the sky.

This time there actually was wind, and it was the first thing Virgil had searched for. Just in case they were being duped again. When he'd cleared that up, everything hit him. This was out. This was well, and truly, out. Just from standing there, in that one spot, he could look up at the sky and see nothing above him but what he could only describe as infinity. Past the sky was space, and past space was nothing. There wasn't a ceiling. If he looked forward that went on too. There were no walls. “Mel?”

The human was giddy to be outside and was all smiles. She beamed over at Virgil from from where he stood on the other side of the engine hood from her and waited for him to continue. The android, she could see, was dumbstruck and his mouth gaping open like a fish out of water as he looked up at the sky.

“Aperture is, um... its tiny, isn't it?”

She nodded. You could get lost in how massive the structure was, and compared to other man made buildings it was, indeed, massive. From that perspective, Aperture was in no means small. It took the knowledge and experience of being anywhere else in the world to know that it would never be the largest thing in existence. Not even close.

“This is...” Virgil gripped at his head, turning in circles to look around. “This is big. This is really, really big, Mel. I mean, I was wondering how you were not able to find anything while you were gone, but my scanners are just dead. There's literally nothing out here.”

She scribbled on one of her notes and pasted it to the window for him to grab when he was done being awestruck.

_We did it, though!_

“You know what?” Virgil slammed his hands down on the engine hood when he was done reading the note, her grinning face infectious and he was catching onto it. “We did! This is it! Mel, you are _out of here!”_ He thrust his arm out over the hood, offering out his hand and Mel grasped onto it in celebration of their victory. Everything had been built up to this moment and it had paid off. They were in wide, open spaces with fresh air and not a machine in sight aside from the few dead cars that littered the parking lot. No killer robots, repulsion gel, toxic goo, searing lasers, or bottomless chasms to fall into. Just a large patch of a cloudy sky and vegetation.

“Back in the car, Olympian!” Virgil patted the hood and thrust himself enthusiastically back into his seat. “Like Nigel said, we are going-going-gone! Just gone! You can't even see us anymore, we are so gone. We are goner than gone! This is us, right now, leaving, we two, and being more gone than a robot getting sucked into space through a portal on the moon. That is how gone we are going to be!”

_That happened, right?_

“Yeah, that actually happened.”

The gate would have had a peg stopping them from leaving the parking lot with their vehicle, but it looked like it had broken off ages ago. There was nothing keeping Mel from hitting the gas again and leaving the last piece of Aperture behind them in the dust that collected on the abandoned road. It was riddled with potholes and weeds grew out of the numerous cracks in the asphalt, but it was better than having nothing to drive on at all. A vehicle this small would not have made it far going directly through the wheat like Mel had to do when she'd walked to her run down barn. I wouldn't be long until the parking lot was far behind them, and then finally out of sight completely. It was only then that Virgil was getting a look at just how far one stretch of land could take them. There was the faded ghost of mountains in the great distance, and every now and again they would pass patches of forests, but the countryside was mostly blank.

The radio continued to run white static, but it sputtered again and started to faintly pick up on a channel. Virgil turned it up in surprise and they waited for the sound to clear up. “Are we getting something?”

Turrets.

They'd picked up on some of the singing turrets from Aperture. Specifically, it sounded like two of them. Mel recognized the song being played as the one that had been her reward for helping the lonely turrets on her way to old Aperture. The woman's cheeks flushed at the thought, happier for them now more than ever. She wondered if they knew that she was leaving. Mel couldn't do much singing, but she pursed her lips together and started to whistle along instead. Virgil raised a brow at Mel, not used to hearing a lot of noise from the human, and then attempted to mimic her. No such luck.

The song was awfully familiar, though. He could only just remember a skeleton of the lyrics and he'd sung them while working a few times. He must have heard the turrets singing it before. He didn't feel like embarrassing himself now that he had an audience, so the core got the window to roll down and folded his arms over the door so he could get some wind through his hair and enjoy the drive. Now that they weren't going through a pitch black tunnel it wasn't so frightening.

The turrets singing would not last forever, though, and after a few minutes the song cut out and returned to blank static. Not only had the radio stopped picking up on the turrets, but Virgil all of a sudden became very uncomfortable in his own head. He blinked a few times, everything feeling a little fuzzier, now, and he pinched his brow with a groan. He wasn't reading some of his old functions correctly and the Wifi he'd taken so much pride in was not in service. The vast archives of knowledge he could access on a daily basis had been cut off, as well.

They were no longer in range of Aperture's signal.


	21. Chapter 21

This could not have been more typical.

“You know...” Virgil began with a sigh. “I'm not sure you're familiar with Murphy's Law. Do you know Murphy's Law?”

Mel shook her head. The red-haired woman looked pretty fed up.

“Its the concept that if something _can_ go wrong it _will_ go wrong. I think that about sums our luck up pretty well, right?”

She agreed with him wholeheartedly.

They were stranded. Virgil and Mel were currently bumming around on top of the car, Mel laying on her back on the roof while Virgil sat on the engine hood looking out over the miles of land that they had not, and apparently would not, cover. After a miraculous three full hours of driving they had run out of gas. Some of it Virgil suspected was on fumes alone and he also suspected that the fuel they had used may not have been your average gasoline. There was no possible way they would have been able to make three hours on what they'd found alone if Aperture hadn't messed with it, but eventually their car couldn't take it anymore and slowed to a stop. Nothing else was wrong with it. The engine was fine. The tires were fine. The brakes were fine. They had just run out of gas.

The sun had fully set and it was completely dark out now. Crickets could be heard chirping on the side of the road and at one point there had been coyotes howling in the far distance, something that had made Virgil jump initially until Mel explained to him what they had been. They sounded less like animals and more like screaming banshees, in his opinion. Virgil had really thought that by now they would have found something. Anything. This mission that they had been so passionate about and really felt they were making progress in had come to a total halt and they were both downtrodden for it. This had been the worst possible scenario.

Virgil and Mel each wanted to ask the other what they would do next, but neither spoke up because they knew the other did not have a clue. They might as well have been on a deserted island in the middle of the ocean. No, that would have even been better than this. Islands provided their own resources. Humans weren't birds, she couldn't just eat the seeds off of the crops for the rest of her life. Mel thought that they would have maybe seen a car. If they stayed put another vehicle could come their way, but then she thought about how this road led to a dead end. If there were humans still around other than inside Aperture they would have put up a sign saying that this highway lead absolutely nowhere. She remembered that the land Aperture was built on was private property and absolutely confidential, but three hours should have given them more than enough space between the labs and civilization. What had happened up here? Every farm house they passed looked rundown and abandoned, so they hadn't bothered stopping to see if anyone was still living inside. They all looked as hopeless as her barn had been.

So it was just the two people. A human and a robot, and a car full of limited supplies for the one half of them that couldn't just live off of sitting under the sun for a few minutes.

“This is awful.” Virgil grumbled, his arms rested on top if his knees and digging his chin into them. He didn't want to feel like the better option would have been for Mel to stay in Aperture, but the urge to was surfacing again. He would never say it out loud, and he suspected he didn't need to. Mel was an intelligent individual, despite some of her odd quirks, and she would have been going over every possible solution in her head. What a good puzzle solver, but there was no puzzle out here for her. Just wheat. The one time Virgil was able to leave the laboratories and the only thing they'd been able to see was basically just dying grass that you could make bread out of. Figures.

Mel wrote him a note and arched her arm backwards and down the window for him to grab whenever he noticed it. He was usually prepared to grab a note from her whenever he heard the pen scribbling. It was dark out but he could read perfectly well with the illumination of his own eyes and   pseudo night vision installed in his head.

_I have to walk. There's no other way around this._

“Yeah... Yeah, I know.” Virgil felt something catch in his throat that made his voice raspy. Things he knew weren't there and may have just been memories. “There's no going back from here. We've driven too far. I mean, we must be half way across Michigan by now. We may not even be IN Michigan anymore. We might have just wandered into a different state entirely and what is humanity's obsession with wheat?!”

_This is nothing. You should see Kansas._

“I feel like I already have. There's no way this is normal. I've seen pictures of Michigan. Isn't there a lake or something around here we should have hit? Aren't there cities we should have been passing? Mountains? At the very least we should have seen something else growing. Where is everyone?!”

_Maybe some of it is barley and oats too._

“Yeah, very funny...” Virgil ran his hands through his hair, knocking his goggles askew. He closed his eyes and rested his forehead against his knees, trying to calm down. He felt Mel give him a pat on the shoulder from above, but with how quick it had she clearly wanted his attention. When Virgil looked over at her the human pointed upwards. He followed her finger to the sky and his eyes hung on the millions of little twinkling lights above them. The moon was only on the horizon and was a dim orange, meaning that it left the center of the sky as dark as it could be with the milky way at its brightest potential. Virgil had seen pictures of space. There were the planets in Nigel's testing track, and he was aware of those. He was aware of how they were giant compared to Earth, but he was once again taken by the sheer scale he found himself under. Its one thing to look at photos, it was another to see a star that he clearly new to be Jupiter and to see how small it was from the distance that was between them. He could see Venus, as well, and she was the second brightest thing in the night sky next to the moon.

Mel lay back against the car roof with her hands folded on her stomach. She let out a long, calming breath of air and was smiling. Despite the reality of survival slipping away from the human's grasp, she was being mellow and it really was something Virgil still could not get a clear concept of. He followed her lead, though, and he lay back to look up at the sky. Hopefully he wasn't heavy enough to break the car window, but it seemed to hold him up okay. A meteor flashed across the sky and burnt away in the atmosphere within a second and Virgil's eyes widened. “Oh... that's pretty neat. It does this every night?”

Mel nodded.

“I can see why you wanted to get back up here so badly. I'm just sorry this hasn't been working out.”

_I'm not giving up. We can try again tomorrow._

“Right...” Virgil tried to imagine it, but to him it was all very illogical. Nearly impossible. No, just impossible. She was recovering from surgery. This was something that should absolutely, under no circumstances, be happening. All of that work up until now and the pay off seemed to be that Mel was going to just perish on the side of the road somewhere. If that happened, in an odd, slanted reality Aperture had won. The facility kept Mel under lock and key and released her into a post-apocalyptic world. What a sick joke. She seemed to be steadfast and fearless through it all, so he had to wonder.

“Are you scared?”

He didn't have to wait long for Mel to reply.

_I've been scared since you woke me up._

“You sure hide it well.” Virgil wished he had that same kind of restraint. “I have to admit, though. I know that situation right now is a little tense, but its kind of nice not having to worry about constant danger. I mean even when it was just me alone in my repair room there was a threat of the area shifting or that I'd fall off my rail again. Here we're just... is there a word for what we're doing right now?”

_Stargazing._

He laughed, feeling stupid for asking. “Oh, right. That makes sense, doesn't it? But look at what I mean. I'm about to do something that is absolutely insane.” Virgil sat forward, cupped his hands around his mouth, and at the top of his voice byte he shouted into the night air. “GLADOS! IS! AN! INGRATE!”

There wasn't even an echo to answer him back with how flat the land was and he turned around to grin triumphantly at Mel. “Eh? See that? Couldn't get away with that inside Aperture's walls, could you? She can't hear us. She can't see us. She can't touch us. Same with the Mainframe now, I suppose.” He still hadn't decided if they were one and the same.

Mel had started applauding from where she lay for his performance. The woman stared back up at the stars, taking a breath of the cold night air but coughed a little at how dry it had been and it hurt her lungs. She'd gotten too used to Aperture's musty, recycled air already. She shivered at how chilly it had gotten, rubbing her hands against her arm to tame the goose bumps she'd gained. Still, she could have fallen asleep there staring up at the sky. On many nights in her barn she had done just that. Then she remembered the night that she was pulled into Aperture by Atlas and P-body. She had been stargazing over a rising moon just like this, though it had been a few days and it was no longer full. A sad thought struck her when she gazed at the moon, now growing paler in color the higher it reached for the sky. She handed her thoughts down to Virgil.

_I wanted to see humans make it to space, but I missed it._

Virgil scratched at the hair on the back of his neck as he read the note. That was truly something to feel down about missing. “Yeah, by only a few years. NASA launched a rocket to go to the moon in... in...” He thought about it a moment and searched his files. There used to be a way that he could pull it up, but the data was no longer in there and he frowned. “Uh, sorry. I guess I don't have that information. In any case, you guys made it up there.”

The clouds from earlier that had dotted the sky were piling on heavier the more time passed, the wind picking up and sending some to block the sky out. The moon on the horizon was the first to disappear, now only a faint halo of light behind the thick clumps of water. It was a minor detail, but it bothered Virgil that he didn't have all of his files on hand and it felt like a chunk of his brain had been stored away somewhere completely different from his head. It was not at all a comfortable feeling and he shivered at how empty it felt. Where there was supposed to be a year on the moon landing was just a blank slate.

Mel lightly tapped the Maintenance Core and handed him one last note for the evening.

_I'm going to get some sleep. Good night, Virgil._

“Oh, okay.” Virgil blinked, being pulled out of his thoughts and grinning at her as she sat up and slid off the roof of the car and to the ground. “Night, Mel.”

He had no need for sleep, so it was going to be a very long night. Virgil watched the human crawl back into the car and attempt to make herself a comfortable sleeping space between the two chairs, but the inside of the car was rather cramped and wasn't suited for lounging. Mel took her boots off and placed them in the back where the food was and tried to stretch her legs from the passenger seat to the driver's side.

Humans needed a warm and comfortable space in order to get rest, right? Virgil checked the temperature. Approximately 6 degrees Celsius and on the other side of the scale 42 degrees Fahrenheit. That was cold, right? Virgil sat up and turned around to look in through the window at her. He deftly tapped the glass. “Hey, Mel? I can't tell, but is it cold in there? Do you want my jacket?”

She looked up at him and nodded, mouthing a 'thank you' in response. Virgil started to slip his jacket off, the vest underneath covered fully in tropical floral patterns with long, white sleeves with a few holes in them. Virgil frowned at how out of shape they looked when compared to his jacket and just decided to roll them up to his elbows so they wouldn't get caught on anything. As he was moving his jacket off, one of the pink sticky notes from the pocket fell out. He was quick to react and grabbed it out of the air. Realizing he should probably grab the other one, he stuffed the first of the notes into the pocket of his pants and searched his jacket for the other.

He read the second note off before putting it away and rolled his eyes. Oh, right. This one was the 'dumb' note. He wondered why he even hung onto this one other than he was being passive aggressive towards Mel at the time. However, as he looked at the pink sticky note a thought struck him, one that should have been clear to him much sooner than now. Virgil got off the hood of the car and went around to the passenger window where Mel was trying to get comfortable and handed her his jacket. “Here you go. Sorry about any oil stains on it.”

She didn't mind and was just happy to have something to wrap around her shoulders and arms as she drifted off. Virgil walked away and paced around the road for a bit while she fell asleep. His thoughts ran away from him and went in all kinds of crazy directions. He thought about things along the lines of 'this is ludicrous' and 'I'm out of my processor'. It was funny that when he did not have company he could talk to himself for hours, but now that he had someone else with him and she was sleeping he knew very well to keep his big trap shut. So many things had gone wrong that he was only asking for disaster at this point. While Virgil was stressing, Mel had fallen asleep, unaware of her friend's inner turmoil just beyond the car. When he'd done a good ten minutes of pacing, Virgil walked back to the window to see if Mel was still awake. She was not, so it was now or never.

Virgil planted the sticky note on the car wheel with Mel's hand writing. The stunt he was about to pull would make him an enormous hypocrite, but he was at least getting a better understanding of Mel's thought process when she'd initially made the note. He stood in front of the car, the long run of black tar stretching through bare fields into the sky. Fields that had crickets, crows, coyotes and possibly other things starting with C that they had not yet seen that could have been hiding from them. Crocodiles? No, those needed water, didn't they? He was pretty sure they were on the wrong part of the map for those, anyway, but he couldn't find that file either. This was beginning to get mildly annoying.

“Oh boy...” He attempted to psyche himself up for the long walk he was about to take. “Okay, here we go. Just going to put one foot in front of the other and not look back. See if there's something over that rise. That's not too far, right? Mel, she just keeps going and going. She doesn't stop and she's got muscles. Those get tired. I don't have muscles and I don't get tired so it should all just be...fine. It'll all be fine.”

So much for trying not to talk to one's self so the human didn't wake up. Thankfully, Mel had been sleeping like a stone and it gave Virgil the perfect gate to start heading off without a single word out of her in protest. Because she would have been against this, and for probably a very good reasons. He just didn't want to think about what those reasons were.

Virgil shook himself out, squared himself up, stiffened his chin, and walked.

At first, being alone on the road wasn't as bad as he thought it would be. It was not much different from his management rail. Back in Aperture he could go for very long periods of time without speaking to anyone and did nothing but ride along his rail, following it wherever it decided he should go while he searched for parts for his workshop. The basic concept was there. He was alone, walking a straight line to a location, it was dark, and he was searching for something. Even though there was a clock that told him the time at all hours, and was 100% accurate to his region, Virgil had no real concept of how it passed. That was how it used to be, anyway. He had grown so used to having Mel to talk to over the past few days that a task he was usually able to do without a hindrance now seemed to be taking ages. He could have started talking to himself again, but he didn't feel like it.

The coyotes started howling again, but they no longer bothered him and he realized that even if they wanted to attack him his assist droid body was made of metal and wouldn't have been fun for them to digest. If Virgil was able to look up anything on them at all he would have known that they did not normally attack people and were hardly bigger than a small house dog, but in his current state of mind he could not pull the information up. He wondered if he was losing his mind, and realized that may as well have been it. Some of what made him so intelligent was that he had access to all kinds of information fed to him and the other cores throughout Aperture whenever they needed it, and he was one of the few that new how to utilize it correctly, or even cared to. He had to ask himself if what was happening was dangerous, and decided that it wasn't. It was just embarrassing. He'd be more scatterbrained than usual.

Hours had passed and the crickets chirping began to die. The clouds had fully rolled in and completely covered the sky, turning from black to a blue-gray the closer the morning came. Virgil would stop every now and then to do a 360 turn around, making sure that he wasn't being followed or if he'd missed catching any other forms of life. He'd been startled by a flock of black birds that flew out of the field from right beside him and he jumped away with a shout, taking the hint to keep walking. The wind had picked up and was knocking his hair around, sweeping it to the side and managing to get a shiver out of Virgil by how strange it felt, rather than the temperature. It would not be the strangest sensation, however. When the morning had lightened up and turned the world around him silver with low clouds, a light spray of water showered down.

Virgil stopped dead in his tracks, raising his arms over his head and shielding himself from the light drizzle that was coming down and protesting loudly. “Oh come _ON!_ ”

He was waterproof, as long as he wasn't absolutely submerged, but having soggy clothes was still terrible. The android had been walking for hours and was fed up with this new mishap, kicking a stone clear off the road and upsetting some birds in the field to go flying away. He raised his head to the sky and yelled at it. He'd gotten into the habit of yelling at astronomical, mighty forces of power recently and it was one he didn't seem ready to break out of any time soon.

“There anything else you want to throw at me?! I can stand it! Try me! Just try it! You want to fight me, nature? I'll win! There's nothing you could give that I can't take! I have a human stuck in a car in the middle of nowhere with waning rations but SURE! Lets make water fall from the sky on ol' Virgil and make it even harder on him to find help! Right! It’s not like I was keeping an eye out for air crafts or anything useful like that!”

He grit his teeth, then flinched when he got a droplet in his eye. He grumbled something nasty under his breath and grabbed a hold of his goggles, pulling them down over his eyes so that he wasn't getting at least part of his face rained on. He was just about ready to continue his walk, but the sensation of the water had been tingly and he stayed in one place to focus on it. In his anger he had failed to realize that this was water that was falling out of the sky at him without any other resource. The sky didn't just spring a leak from a pipe or anything structural like that. It was simply just coming out of the clouds. Virgil blinked a few times as he slowly calmed down and continued to stare at it.

“Huh.”

There was a flash somewhere in the distance and he looked up. Far away over the flat fields where the mist obscured the horizon and you could see the dark underbellies of storm clouds, bright light pulsed and flickered for a fleeting moment and disappeared. Virgil stood by to see if it would happen again, but the follow up was a low, faint rumble. As fascinating as he considered his first real experience with thunder and lightning, Virgil decided that this was not the place to be stopping. “Oop. Time to go.”

He quickened his pace. Actually, come to think of it, what exactly was stopping him from just running? Absolutely nothing, he'd try that.

 

\----------

 

Mel would have slept longer if she had been somewhere comfortable. Unfortunately, the combination of light coming in through the windows and the thinly cushioned seats of the mobile sardine can didn't beg for a five star rating in luxury. The woman had been very stiff sitting up and the first thing she did was stretch the soreness away. Mel was all for having herself a good breakfast, bag up the food into an old backpack she'd found in the car, and then get straight to their hike away from the broken down vehicle. She patted her hands against the jacket she had used for a blanket and smiled, ready to give it back to its owner. Mel was about to get out of the car when she realized it had been lightly drizzling since at least the early morning hours and had to wonder why it was Virgil had not retreated inside. In fact, it was a miracle he hadn't woken her up about it, especially since she could hear a trace of thunder in the distance.

Using the jacket over her head as a shield from the rain, Mel opened the car door and went out to see if he was walking around outside to check on the weather, but after doing a full circle around the car there was no trace of him. Feeling panic raise a knot in her injured stomach, Mel looked around the inside of the car again to see if he'd somehow managed to squeeze into the back, but she had no luck finding him there either. It wasn't until she'd done looked back into the car that she caught a glance at the pink piece of paper pasted to the steering wheel. It had been one of her's, and obviously worn from being folded and stuffed somewhere. She read the text in her handwriting and remembered Virgil had pocketed it. She assumed it was because she had said something that amused him, but this was far from funny anymore.

_'I'll go. You stay.'_

Mel dropped the note on the damp ground and threw the jacket back into the car through the open window. She circled around a few more times, looking for any sign of Virgil in the fields or if he'd made some kind of imprint in the wheat. When she didn't see him on the road Mel climbed onto the car and stood up on the roof, scanning the horizon for however further of a scope that little extra height had given her. She didn't see him on the highway anywhere. He was just gone.

A hand went to Mel's stomach, a sharp pain causing her to grip the fabric of her jumpsuit. Her knuckles turned white at how tightly she held the suit between her fingers and she doubled over. Despite the deep belief that it would not work, Mel opened her mouth and attempted to call him. She forced air from her lungs and through her throat, moving her lips to form Virgil's name but the only sound out of her were some gasps and a choked up, strain of a whimper. She eventually stopped when she'd tried calling so hard that she'd gagged, folding into herself and sinking to sit on top of the roof. She hugged her arms around her waist.

Any number of things could happen, and every one of them occurred to her in that moment. They raced through her head in flashes of horrible imagery from the android finding himself hopelessly lost to fully breaking down and not being able to function. She thought about how she had gone to sleep the night before in the company of one of the few things she still had as a constant and how he'd walked away. Had things been different between them, she would have suspected he went back the other way towards Aperture. She knew this wasn't true, even though she hoped that had been the case. She felt he might have had a better chance if he just retraced his steps and found his way back. She knew, though, that he'd gone forward and was looking for help on her behalf.

What could she do? He could have taken off the moment she was asleep, giving him hours of an advantage ahead of her and he did not grow tired. And he'd asked her to stay there. What if he found help and she wandered off where he couldn't find her? Either way she thought about it, his condition would remain unknown to her unless they got really lucky. Mel felt the cold spray against her back, but she stayed huddled on the roof of the car until she'd started to shake violently. She wiped the moister from her brow, droplets collecting on her eyelashes. She wasn't helping anything to stay out there and catch a cold, so she reluctantly slid back off the roof and into the passenger's seat of the car. Mel rolled the windows up and curled folded under the warmth of the jacket that had been left behind. She'd have some food and she would look out at the rain, but all she could do for now was wait and hope that everything was going to be okay.

Time passed, and so did the storm. Mel was relieved that it had never rained too hard or that the lightning had gotten too close. She didn't know how Virgil would have fared walking around in full downpour. She wondered if he could act as a lightning rod, and she added the possibility to her list of worries. The day went by without a glimpse of the android, hours passing over her with the sun until the sky could be seen through the clouds again. The sky turned pink with the setting sun and the darkness of night returned, only Mel did not feel like going out and watching the stars like the night before. She felt like she may not enjoy it the same way that she used to ever again after having one night to show it to someone that had never seen the sky before. She had been isolated before, and as much as it had bothered her then, she knew that anyone she cared about was already long gone. The situation had shifted so that she had something to actually lose this time.

Mel had her dinner and threw the can of tuna out of the car window and onto the pavement, hearing it clatter and startle an animal in the field close by. She sat up to see over the rim of the window, watching two glowing, green eyes catch the moonlight and disappear. She guessed it to be a fox out hunting field mice. She starting to get sleepy again, realizing it was most likely drawing close to the same time that she'd gone to bed the night before. She didn't want to sleep. It didn't feel right to, but she had nothing else to do but sit there and feel horrible.  Eventually, whether Mel had wanted to or not, she drifted off in the tiny, car sized haven in the center of the wilderness full of food and warmth, if not the most comfortable seats. Time had passed by so slowly that day and she felt ill. As much as she had not wanted to fall asleep, her body was relieved for all of the extra rest it was finally being rewarded with after so much physical turmoil and she slipped into it deep.

Another day went by without a word from Virgil, and the day after had been just as uneventful. Mel had nothing to occupy her time with other than getting out to walk around and stretch when the Gremlin became too cramped for her to sit in any longer. She had to restrain herself from eating too much of the canned food and had limited herself to two per day. One in the morning and one in the evening. At one point Mel tried walking a distance until she got a raised view in the surrounding land, but it made no difference. There wasn't anything to see. When she'd returned to the car she passed some more of her time by plucking a few stocks of wheat and took the seeds out to throw on the road for a couple of mourning doves that had dropped in for a rest. When they'd lost interest in being fed any longer, Mel slid back into the car once again and started drawing on her sticky notes, pasting her doodles up along the inside of the car as decoration. Drawings of things she'd remembered from her childhood, such as animals at the zoo or more current characters like the robots she had seen going through Aperture. She drew the singing turrets, adding little music notes up beside them. When she decided that was enough wasted paper for one afternoon Mel did a whole great amount of nothing at all.

She almost preferred being harassed by mordant, murderous machines over this.

Again, night fell for the third time since they had escaped without much of anything happening. The cans of food she'd brought were already half gone and she began to wonder if she had made the right decision by leaving a few back in Aperture. It seemed to be more of an emotional decision rather than actually using her brain. Her head probably would have told her that this scenario was a possibility and to take everything you can. All the cans that you can. Like background noise that one may only pay attention to selectively, the worry she held for Virgil came back and disrupted any peace she may have formed for herself over the past few hours. The woman lay back and folded her arm over her eyes, evening out her breathing and calming her nerves, but with shallow success.

“ _We've got this.”_

She repeated those words to herself a few times, spinning them through her head and making the effort to believe them. They got this. Against all odds, this was only just another bump in the road for two very stubborn people. Mel had no other choice but to eventually fall asleep, again with the fear of isolation to disturb her dreams. Through the darkness she could feel the draft whistling through Aperture's greatly spacious areas like the testing droid repair station that hung over a pit into the center of the earth and the loud hum of factory machines building cubes, turrets, and whatever else the facility called for. She saw the burning red glow of the robots that had been shut down by the mainframe and how the darkness was thick enough to suffocate.

Mel opened her eyes. The dim light of dawn was the first thing to welcome and comfort her, and the woman relaxed, tightening the jacket over her shoulders from the freezing, crisp air coming in through cracks in the car's sides. When Mel closed her eyes to try and fall back asleep for a couple more hours, she realized that the hum of Aperture that had been in her dreams was something she was currently hearing while she was awake as well. There was the distinct, grated churning of an engine and Mel sat up to look out over the road from the window shield. Coming down the highway towards her car was a faded blue pickup truck with chipped paint and rust along the edges. It looked to be in no better shape than Mel's car, but it was running and coming right towards her.

The red-head flung the car door open and stepped out onto the road, waving her arms into the air to flag the truck down. From where she stood she began to make out a shape past the window of the vehicle. The driver was a woman, but she seemed to be the only visible passenger. However, once they were close enough, a figure leaned over the side from the back of the truck, his spikey head of brown hair whipping around in the breeze as he waved at her excitedly. Virgil cupped a hand to the side of his mouth and hollered at Mel as they came down the road. He looked so very proud of himself. “Hey, Mel! Look what I found!”

Mel was overjoyed. She stood by, only just barely managing to wait for the truck to slow down and come to a stop. The driver remained in her truck once it was parked, but Virgil jumped out of the back to meet Mel on the road the second they had stopped and the whole car rocked under his weight as he bounced off of it. Mel, barefoot on a road that was damp and chilled from the morning condensation, ran straight for Virgil and flung her arms around him in the tightest hug she could physically give him. Virgil had nearly been knocked over at the velocity she'd taken in just that small distance, but he straightened himself out and returned the gesture. “I know I said I was going to stop scaring you. Sorry about this.”

He was going to be sorry. Mel quickly let go of him, frowning furiously at the robot, and despite having hands too soft and frail to really do anything to his plated robot body, she began to whale on him. Virgil shrank away from her, surprised by the sudden switch in attitude and brought his arm up to protect himself. “Ow! OW! I can feel that you know—OW! Okay, okay! I said I'm sorry! Look, I got a truck and everything so it worked, didn't it? Ouch! Quit hitting me!”

The woman in the truck watched them curiously, leaning silently against the front wheel to observe them from the car window, but did not bother to get out of the truck to interrupt their moment.

Mel stopped, if only because her hands were starting to get sore, but her eyes were red with stress and water was collecting along the bottom lids. She'd been trying to stay mad at him with a stiff lip, but it quivered and broke the illusion that she was as angry as she wanted to let on. It was exactly like when he'd dropped off his rail to get away from Atlas and P-body, only that time he had been a pathetic, beaten up ball of metal and it felt wrong giving him a good smack. Here he was alive, happy, and perfectly stable. She could be as mad at him as she wanted to be and not feel bad about it. The woman took up a note.

_That was stupid of you!_

“I'm not going to even try arguing that.” Virgil's mouth pulled into a wry, lopsided frown. “It was completely stupid. I even got rained on. And boring. It was tremendously boring. But look!” He held an arm out in the direction of the truck, the woman in the driver's seat waving at them when she realized she was being addressed. “I found a town not too far from here! Its not much, but its a town. Everything's a little worn out and I might have tried, um... I might have tried stealing this truck.”

Mel raised perplexed brow at him and pointed to the running vehicle.

“Yeah. That one. I tried to hijack it to bring it out here, but then got caught by the owner—that nice lady over there in the front seat, yes. Her. She was ready to toss me up and down the place until I explained our situation and she was surprisingly nonchalant about the whole thing, considering how _insane_ it must sound from an outsider's point of view. She offered to drive me out here to get you, on the condition that I ride in the back, and even got some extra gas packed for our car.”

_Why didn't you just ask someone to begin with?_

“Um...” Virgil looked behind him at the truck, the lady in the driver's seat still very patiently waiting for them while they spoke. “I got a little nervous. I mean, look at me. I have visible joints, a broken eye, and what looks to be a headlight in the cavity of my chest from a human's perspective. I'm clearly suspicious.”

Mel shrugged, but nodded. She could agree with that. He was deceptively human in many ways, but not enough to warrant immediate trust.

“Hey, why don't you two get acquainted while I fill the Gremlin up. You still have my jacket, right?” Virgil thumbed over his shoulder at the human in the truck and jogged up behind the running vehicle to climb into the back and grab for the canisters of gas they had brought. He was going to have to make a couple of trips, but once they were beside the car, Virgil leaned into the passenger window and grabbed his jacket out of the seat to slip back on. He felt weird walking around without it. It was nice to have pockets to stuff his hands into when he wasn't doing anything with them, and it had driven him crazy the whole walk.

Mel watched Virgil make himself busy, and while he was filling the Gremlin up she glanced at the woman at the front of the truck. Her dark hair was pulled back into a ponytail and she wore a denim jacket over a black shirt. Mel walked up to the window of the passenger door to look in at her, not yet bold enough to approach the driver's side. She observed the other woman like she'd been a whole other species and Mel subconsciously checked for glowing eyes or the same seams that Virgil had around the neck and his wrists. She hadn't meant to be cautious, but the woman didn't seem to take any offense to it. They looked to be about the same age, or physically, at least. Mel believed herself to be a perfectly aged bottle of wine by now.

The driver then spoke up, her tone even and diligent. The woman had a stern, steeliness about her eyes that commanded attention, partnered in contrast with the warm understanding in her voice. “Can you talk?”

Mel was a little startled by the question. She shook her head.

“But you used to be able to, right?”

Mel nodded.

“Its fine, then. We'll get you fixed up once we're back. Are you injured anywhere else?”

The red-head's hand went to her stomach where the bullet had been. Though it had been removed and the wound had healed up for the most part, she still had a stabbing pain from her core if she moved around too much, so she nodded. She'd also noticed that she'd earned herself a slight limp when she walked, but she hoped that it was only temporary.

The woman in the truck kept her hands to the wheel, her slate gray eyes shifting from Mel to the window in front of her and she nodded out over the road at Virgil. “It's done filling the car.”

Mel was a little thrown off by the pronoun used for the android, at first, but when she realized she had been talking about Virgil she looked over to see that he had finished emptying the last of the gas into the Gremlin. Now that her head had cleared and she could think straight, Mel found it strange that they needed to fill the gas tank at all. It would have been more efficient to simply ride in the truck with the other human and abandon the other car altogether rather than riding along behind her. Mel studied her friend, her fingers curling into an anxious fist and relaxed again when she decided to approach him. As she walked she took a note from the thinning cube in her pocket.

Virgil closed off the clasp over the gas tank and smiled up at Mel as if nothing in the world was wrong. However, his enthusiasm thinned when he saw that she was not sharing the same energetic high that he was. “Is... something wrong? I know that other human seems a little cold, but...”

_Are you leaving?_

Virgil had been avoiding the subject so that they could share this victory. They had finally triumphed and it should be cause for celebration. It wasn't meant to last, though, and he knew he'd be the cause of it. She stood before him, her eyes demanding a straight answer out of the core. He wouldn't side step her. He was once able to beat around negative details when she had been in Aperture her first time through, but it seemed that it was no longer part of is nature. At least not with her.

“I had a lot of time to think while I was walking. As amazing as this place is and as happy for you as I am that you finally made it here, its not for me. I've lost a chunk of myself leaving Aperture behind. I have files that I can no longer access, just as an example. That's not even an important detail, but it made me realize how out of place I am. I'm just not... I'm not supposed to be out here, Mel. I need to be back there where I can do what I was made for. I don't expect you to understand why, because I don't fully get it either.”

Mel looked as if she would melt where she stood. Every feature of her sunk and her bright blue eyes shaded over. She reached out and grabbed for his hand hurriedly and tugged at it in the direction of the truck desperately. When he didn't budge she pulled another note out on him. He didn't stop her like he had before and let her get it out the best way she could.

_I can help you live here. We can work through it._

“Mel...”

He fell silent again since the woman was already on to her next note.

_You don't have to go back there._

“Mel.”

_We worked so hard._

_You can find purpose out here._

_You deserve this just as much as I do._

_I can't lose anyone else. Please, don't do this._

“Melanie.”

She had already been half way through her next protest, but the mention of her full name caused her to freeze up. Mel's hands quaked and they dropped the pen and paper. Virgil reached out for her and drew her in, wrapping his arms around the human and keeping her close. She slowly raised her hands and returned the embrace, feeling as though she had been tricked into thinking that her heart could not break anymore, but this had hurt too much. She wanted to ask him to stay with her own words and question his reasoning, but if all she could offer were small pieces of paper with writing than she could barely get an argument out. She wasn't sure that if she could speak he'd be any easier to convince. The only thing she could do to keep him longer was to stay like that.

“I'm sorry...” The ghost sensation had returned. That pressure that built up in his chest and to his forehead that he could not relieve. On pure reflex he ran a thumb under his cheek from where his head was bowed over Mel's shoulder, and in doing so he realized what it was that was bothering him. However, his cheek had been dry when he'd checked. “I have no excuses, but I am sorry. I'm going to be fine but you're going to be great. You get to leave and conquer. You... heheh. You're getting me worked up. I didn't even think that was possible.”

He pulled back, wiping his hands under his eyes again but they remained dry. He laughed at how ridiculous he must have looked. “We're a pretty good team, right? We shut down AEGIS and faced off against GLADOS head on. We beat the Mainframe, which is basically like fighting Aperture itself. Not bad for a simple Maintenance Core.”

She shook her head. He'd gotten her to smile again, if only briefly. As Mel had smiled, though, his own disappeared. This could very well be the last time they ever saw each other and he didn't want her to leave with just a few frail pieces of paper and a pen. Virgil patted himself down, searching for something he could offer her. He remembered waking up to seeing his friend had taken his goggles off in order to put them on herself and he reached for his head for them. “Uh, here. You can have these. They look better on you, anyway. Just something of me to... to keep with you. Its not all of me but its something.”

Mel accepted the goggles, running her thumb over the lens fondly. She fixed them over her bun so that they rested on top of her head in the same way Virgil wore them when they weren't being utilized. Mel mouthed to him 'thank you' and leaned forward to plant a kiss on his cheek before pulling him in for one last hug. Virgil was a little dazed by the kiss he'd gotten. It had been a new sensation, but not at all a bad one. It didn't stop him from returning the hug.

“Take care of yourself, Mel.”

Neither of them wanted to let go, but Mel was still aware there was a very kind person waiting on them to bring her back to the town. When she separated herself from Virgil, Mel held onto his hands and bobbed them up and down, giving him one last, misty smile. There were so many things she wanted to say to him. There was so much she'd wanted to share and talk about, but they had never been given the opportunity to talk like normal people. Mel couldn't, at the very least, and it had made the short time they'd spent together even briefer. When she'd collapsed and Virgil had found her food, Mel had been perfectly content with just getting to talk with him. No danger, or any good reason to run from it up until GLaDOS intervened. They just spoke for the longest time in the isolation of that ruined lobby deep in the depths of the earth. She picked up her pen from the floor, and instead of writing on the paper she used the palm of her left hand, holding it up to him with the blue ink smudging slightly, but the message was clear.

_See you later, Virgil._

“Heheh... Yeah, see ya.”

She felt good about being able to return the goodbye this time, whether she could speak or not. Virgil waved to her as the human turned around to head for the truck. She opened the passenger door and situated herself into the front seat, the woman beside her reminding her to fasten her seat belt. The android stood on the road, waving until the truck had backed up and turned around, his last glimpse of Mel seen through the rear view mirror on the side and she was still waving back to him until he was too small for her to make out his face. He watched them go for a long time. The sun had finally come up over the horizon, drastically changing the sky from pink to orange and setting the fields on fire with color.

“She's out.” Virgil mumbled to himself. “She is out...Good job, Mel. Hopefully, you'll get to enjoy it this time around.” He'd never felt so conflicted, a mass of remorse and relief at odds with one another, but above it all was fulfillment. He was allowed to feel good about it, as well as sorry. Perhaps, bittersweet was the word he'd been searching for. He'd really been out of his own head, recently. It was time to head back home now that their Champion had been escorted out of the stadium.

This was a triumph.


	22. Epilogue

Things in Aperture had turned absolutely sideways... Again. On top of the facility still recovering from decades of decay and then being taken over by a rogue personality sphere, the damage continued to pile up from the shenanigans of a Maintenance Core and the Olympian test subject that had blown through Aperture like a storm. It had been about a week since Virgil returned to the facility, having had some initial trouble with running his vehicle but he had the files necessary for driving and had been paying close attention to Mel when she'd been in charge of the car, so he had straightened his skills out fairly quickly. Other than that, he had no trouble returning to Aperture and finding his way back underground.

Where does one go after seeing the outside world for the first time in their long, immortal life? In his case, he went straight back to his repair wing. Aperture's chambers would be malfunctioning after the Mainframe had gone haywire. He had a small part of the facility he was dedicated to where he would go in, repair whatever the issue was, and then go back to the workshop to see if there were any robots in need of fixing. Basically, all the same stuff. Only this time he had set himself up with a project to fix his own core body. He planned to return to it at some point, if he could manage to on his own. He was adamant about the core being functional and not damaged like he'd left it. It had taken Virgil a while to get used to working on fixing his own shell, but nothing could compare to having to take it apart in order to get at his Wifi router. The memory of it still gave him chills, and the assist droid briefly shivered. Best not to think about it anymore.

“Virgil?”

“Yeah?” The Maintenance Core hadn't looked up from where he was poking around at the inside of his core hull with a screwdriver, but he knew the voice to be Glitchy's. “What can I do for you today, Glitch? Did you spontaneously combust again?”

“No, nothing like that.” Glitchy rode in on the workshop rail, seeing that Virgil was busy with something and grew uncertain of his presence. “Is this a bad time? I can come back.”

“Nope! Not bad at all, I can take a break.” Virgil hadn't meant to be rude by not looking up at Glitchy, but realizing he was coming off as uninterested he made eye contact. He searched the other core over, looking for whatever it was he came in for but not finding anything out of the ordinary. “What's up?”

“Nothing's really up. I was just wondering if you needed any help. You seem very busy, lately.”

Virgil stared. The offer had never been established before, and now that he had one he didn't know what to do with it. It was a very basic system. Broken core comes in. Fixed core goes out. There was never anything in between, except maybe saving a human from the mechanical claws of death.

“Oh! Uh...yeah, sure. I could use a hand... In a manner of speaking. I was just about to go down by the core line, actually.” He motioned for Glitchy to slide in closer, raising a small black box up to him that was the size of a grape. “This is our voice byte processor. Mine is broken. It got knocked around in a bad fall. If you can find me one of these undamaged I can change it so that it picks up on my speech pattern. It would be a huge help.”

“I'll see what I can do. Won't be long.” Glitchy nodded at Virgil before turning around and sliding back out of the room.

“Thank you!” Virgil almost missed calling after him, staring at the hatch in the wall where Glitchy disappeared and letting the moment sink in. It had been strange, but a nice gesture. Virgil had been using a weighted storage cube as a chair, considering he had none in there to speak of from when he was still just a ball. The android pushed it across the floor so he could get up from his work bench. He stared at the empty hull of his old body and sighed. There was a part of him that wondered what the point was. Maybe it would just be better to stay in the assist droid. It certainly had its perks. He didn't need to string along a management rail, but useless quirks like strumming his fingers on the table while he was thinking had become very distracting. It was a toss up. He'd decide when he was done fixing his core self.

Now that Glitchy had gone, silence returned to the repair wing. Virgil lifted the cube and moved it over to the computer just behind him on the opposite wall to the work bench. Mel's boots sat on the floor against the computer and pasted to the bottom left corner of the monitor with scotch tape was the last pink sticky note he'd kept that she had given him. He hadn't trusted the adhesive on the back to stick for long, so he'd found something else to keep it there.

_'There's you.'_

Virgil rested his cheek in a hand and propped his elbow onto the desk. Yeah, there had been him. There had been her. He thought about the night their car broke down and how bright the stars had been. Even if he didn't want to leave Aperture, maybe he would take a quick trip up to see the sky again. Just to see how it is. Just to see if it was still there. Maybe it would rain again and he could catch another glimpse at that lightning and thunder business.

He had come over to the computer monitor for something, but once he had been distracted with his own daydreaming he absolutely forgot what it had been. The Maintenance Core was annoyed with himself for his own negligence and he tapped a finger on the dash as he stared at the screen and tried to remember what it was. There's that pesky quirk again.

“Oh, right. Solar power installation. That's important.” He put his fingers to the keys and was about to bring up the instructions he needed when he noticed there was an icon faintly flashing at him. He'd always been aware of this app, its icon the shape of a little paper envelope, but had only ever needed to use it once. Now it was telling him that it had received a single item in its inbox. He eyed the icon warily, slowly moving his mouse to click on it and pull the message up.

“What the...A-are you kidding me?! Ahahahaha!”

His laugh was hysterical. Logistics lay out before him, and nothing seemed to match. He had gotten a vague, out of context message from an outside source that had absolutely nothing to do with Aperture. Through the confusion and just the sheer improbability of it all, Virgil was not an unhappy core in that moment. Just a dozen words on the screen and the robot was absolutely brimming with excitement. He could hardly contain himself. His fingers tapped over the letters of his keyboard and replied to the message. He didn't know how she'd managed to do it, but this was incredible!

 

_> The moon landing happened in 1969. I missed it by seventeen years!_

_-That is correct! Thanks for reminding me!_

_> Hi, Virgil! _✿

_-Hello, Mel! :)_


End file.
